Today's summit meeting in Pyongyang between the leaders of South and North Korea is on any estimate, a historic one. It seems assured of success in opening up relations between the two states, officially frozen since the end of the 1950-53 war. The summit agenda includes economic aid for the North, cultural and sporting exchanges, reuniting divided families and relaxation of the tense security confrontation involving one million troops and one of the world's most formidable armoury of weapons.
North Korea's readiness to open up relations with the South came as a surprise in recent months. Its leadership has evidently concluded that the policy of strict isolation from the outside world can no longer be sustained if their regime is to survive. It is threatened by famine, dire shortages of consumer goods and an inability to pay for necessary imports. Its leaders have decided to take the risk that a carefully-controlled opening up to outside influences and contacts might undermine their system. They assume South Korea and other states will be prepared to extend substantial aid and investment precisely in order to head off threats that it might collapse precipitously in East German fashion.
This is a shrewd approach, given that the prospect of such an involuntary reunification fills most South Koreans with dread. Despite decades of propaganda about the desirability of unity, its citizens have grown very much apart from the closed and backward Stalinist regime. There is a widespread fear that taking on the financial burden of reunification would undermine South Korea's hard-won prosperity while the possible migration of millions of impoverished people would be impossible to absorb. President Kim Dae Jung has therefore won broad support for a much less ambitious agenda of political and economic engagement with North Korea, based on a gradual opening up of relations and a willingness to devote substantial sums for aid and investment in an attempt to stabilise the transition out of its radical isolation. He can count on support from Japan, the United States and probably China and Russia for this approach over coming years.
All these states have much to gain by containing the potential security threats to the East Asian region that could flow from a failure to manage the North Korean transition effectively. That state is equipped with missile systems capable of attacking a number of them and is suspected of running a huge development programme in that technology. There are suspicions, too, that it has been diverting nuclear capacity towards weapons systems, despite US efforts to prevent that with aid in recent years. Given the huge concentration of troops and materiel on the Korean peninsula, the two presidents' efforts to scale down tension will be watched attentively and sympathetically throughout the international community.
Behind the hard political and military realities there remain many human stories of separation and suffering which can be alleviated by this summit. If a regular process of negotiation is set in motion this week, there will be hope that families can be reunited, hunger eased and greater security and stability brought to one of the last cockpits of confrontation to have survived the end of the Cold War.