North Korean state media said the meeting aimed at “opening up a new phase for achieving peace on the Korean peninsula, prosperity common to the nation and national reunification.”

The White House said Tuesday that it was “supportive” of the summit and hoped it would yield progress towards dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons programs, the biggest potential obstacle to peace between the two Koreas.

But they may not figure prominently in discussions. Roh, who leaves office next year, has already said he is unlikely to focus on the issue since it is being handled at multinational talks and because it could spoil the summit atmosphere.

The summit comes amid an upbeat mood in the six-nation negotiations on disarming North Korea, which tested an atomic bomb a year ago.

Unlike his predecessor Kim Dae-Jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for paying the first visit by a South Korean leader to Pyongyang in 2000, Roh travelled by land.

In a carefully choreographed ceremony, Roh walked across a yellow strip in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, stepping over the world’s last Cold War frontier.

“After I return home, many more people will do likewise. Then this line of division will finally be erased and the barrier will break down,” he said.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans waited on roads and waved as Roh’s entourage drove into Pyongyang.

Hundreds of civilians — men in dark suits and women in colorful hanbok traditional gowns — attended the formal welcoming ceremony, where a military honour guard goose-stepped with fixed bayonets.

Roh was expected to deliver gifts for Kim including giant flat-screen TVs and DVDs made in the vastly more prosperous South.

Economic cooperation will be a major focus of the summit, with newspapers saying that multi-billion dollar projects may be on the table.

Critics say both leaders want the summit to boost the chances of a liberal candidate in Seoul’s December presidential election. The conservative opposition, which takes a stronger line with the North, is far ahead in opinion polls.

South Korean conservative activists and defectors from North Korea staged small protests against the summit, branding Roh a pro-Pyongyang leftist.

The best-selling Chosun Ilbo newspaper warned in an editorial that Kim “may use his old tactic to wrest only economic support from South Korea while putting aside important issues for talks with the United States.”

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