The leaders of South and North Korea are holding a landmark summit this week — only the second in the history of the two states.

Close to the heavily fortified border that divides the Korean peninsular, a small group of South Koreans are taking it in turns to bow deeply towards the barbed wire. A few hundred, many of them now very elderly, gather here every year to offer prayers to loved ones from whom they have been separated for more than half a century.

Jon Byong-yoon, 84, has never met his son. The Korean War separated him from his pregnant wife and eventually from his home in the north. His son would now be 56 years old.

He is hopeful that this week’s summit will bring the two countries closer together. “There was engagement between East and West Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. Maybe that can happen here,” he says.

The first summit, in June 2000, was also held in the North’s capital, Pyongyang. Then, cheering crowds provided the backdrop for the bearhug greeting between the two statesmen. That meeting did lead to a few practical signs of progress.

Some of the divided families have been allowed to meet, and a joint industrial zone has been built on the border. But seven years on, many observers, like Brian Myers from South Korea’s Dongseo University, believe little has really been achieved.

“They still have no rail ties, there are no mail or telephone contacts, so the two Koreas are still further apart than the two Germanys were even before Ostpolitik started in the 1960s,” he said. “The South Korean public believes that the cooperation has so far been too much of a one-way street.”

But the South’s government is hopeful that this summit may pave the way for nothing less than a formal end to the Korean war, laying the groundwork for a deal to swap the 1953 ceasefire for a real peace treaty.

Kim Jong-il, of course, was there for the first summit. This time there is a view that the North Korean leader may have an interest in helping his southern counterpart. With an election looming in the South, a successful summit would give President Roh Moo-hyun’s party a boost, at the expense of the conservative opposition whom the North Korean regime is likely to view as potentially a lot less friendly.

Whatever the outcome President Roh seems determined to portray the meeting as a historic event. The North has another incentive to cooperate. The impoverished Communist state now has an economy estimated to be less than three per cent of the size of the affluent South.

The summit may well reach agreement on giving more aid to Pyongyang and a further, though limited, strengthening of the economic ties between the two countries.

Some Koreans believe the meeting should not be taking place at all. Han Chang-kwon is a North Korean defector now living in Seoul. He participated recently in a demonstration highlighting the human rights abuses suffered by his countrymen back home.

“Thousands of North Koreans are in concentration camps, many more are hungry, and this summit will have no meaning if these issues aren’t addressed,” he said.

But the South Korean government believes engagement, not criticism, is more likely to win concessions from its reclusive northern neighbour. President Roh Moo-hyun has promised to push for the divided families to be given more opportunities to meet.

The policy of engagement is one supported by Jon Byong-yoon, desperate to meet his son. “If I was only in my 70s I might have a chance, but I’m 84,” he said. “I’m running out of time.”

BBC News