I don't think anyone doubts this meeting will happen. More confirmation came last week when Kim Jong Il made a hush-hush and highly unusual trip to Beijing to confer with Chinese leaders. Kim may have been hoping to bolster pre-summit support from China, North Korea's closest ally since the Korean War. Kim dressed in a gray Mao suit, a style the Chinese abandoned years ago, greeting Jiang, attired in a Western-style business suit. The collapse of the economy is also driving its new willingness to talk to South Korea.
Factories are at a virtual standstill, and electricity is in short supply, even in the capital.
The famine that has ravaged much of the country in recent years has reportedly eased. Still, Kim Jong Il isn't coming to the table out of desperation, experts say. After six years in power, he is clearly confident that he can extract benefits from the South without losing control. Under his watch, North Korea has allowed almost 240,000 South Koreans to make tightly restricted visits to the Mount Kumgang tourist area just across the border. Several thousand South Koreans are in North Korea helping to build two power plants to replace the nuclear reactors Pyongyang gave up in 1994.