This year, the question whether there will be another inter-Korean summit before the presidential election is getting more attention. It is still too early to say whether the summit will be held. But it is certain that the Roh Moo-hyun administration and progressives in society are putting the top priority on making it happen. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il must have been toying with the idea of gratifying their desire, weighing possible gains and losses.

The Chosun Ilbo and the Hankook Ilbo recently reported about documents showing that the Roh administration has been considering the dispatch of a special envoy to North Korea in a bid to bring the summit about. These documents testify that the administration is abjectly begging for the summit, in return for preventing interference by a superpower in the internal affairs of South Korea -- read the withdrawal of the U.S. Forces Korea -- and the abolition of the National Security Law. The documents also show that Kim Jong-il and his regime are being unresponsive.

A source acquainted with North Korean affairs predicts there will be some difficulties but the summit will be held. But he adds the South will have to bend its knee to the North. In fact, Kim Dae-jung-era unification ministers and a former senior officer from the Agency for National Security Planning do not deny that they are trying to persuade North Korea through various channels to hold the summit. It is well known that Kim Dae-jung's associates are working harder for it than anybody else.

The Roh Moo-hyun administration expects a great deal from a summit. First of all, it wants to adorn its last days in office with an inter-Korean summit. The government also hopes to turn the tide for the progressives in a mood of inter-Korean reconciliation and peace during the presidential election campaign, and for the ruling party by talking about stability and unification. The Roh administration apparently believes it could swing the election at the last minute. Kim Dae-jung's associates, meanwhile, want an inter-Korean summit because they believe they could revive the Sunshine Policy initiated by Kim himself and thus glorify his achievements for unification.

Though seemingly uninterested, the Kim Jong-il regime also feels the necessity of a summit. Isolated since its nuclear test, it needs to secure a supply route from the South for its own survival. It would be dealt a fatal blow if aid from the South was suspended or reduced in scale after international food aid has been stopped or slashed on top of the U.S.-led financial sanctions.

Under these circumstances, if a conservative government takes over after this year's presidential election, South Korea will highly likely make wholesale readjustments to its North Korea policy and definitely change its aid policy. The Kim Jong-il regime therefore urgently needs to prevent a conservative administration from coming to power in the South. All this is corroborated by several examples. In a uniform New Year's editorial in the North Korean press, the regime called for a coalition of anti-conservative forces in the South and denounced the Grand National Party for trying to take power, raining curses on the South’s main opposition party. The North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland has said the possibility of the GNP taking power is “not an internal affair of South Korea." In a column, Song Jong-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Myongji University in Seoul, warns of a possible terror attack on the GNP candidate right before the election.

South Korea’s left-wingers conveniently say North Korea's nuclear weapons target the U.S. and other countries, not the South. But the weapons look too small and primitive to aim at the U.S. If the weapons were pointing at the U.S., North Korea would have accepted the carrot Washington held out. The U.S. is wary of nuclear proliferation, not of its own safety from the North’s nukes. So North Korea is using them for other purposes. What are they? Influencing South Korea and its upcoming presidential election, that’s what.

Why, then, has the North so far been shilly-shallying about the idea of the inter-Korean summit? Apparently, Pyongyang is disappointed because the progressive government in Seoul has lost popularity and looks feeble. It is also weighing the timing of a summit in case it accepts the idea. Also, perhaps North Korea has waited for so long because it believes, as the proverb goes, that those who are thirsty will be the first to dig a well. A retired diplomat says North Korea “may be considering making a gift of a summit to a new administration in South Korea, rather than to the unpopular old one.” But now, the North needs to rescue the South’s left-wingers lest the right-wingers take power. The North apparently wants to use the summit issue and the North Wind -- its influence on the South -- as bargaining chips.

Can they? They undoubtedly did in the past. South Korean presidential candidates used to compete over the North Wind in efforts to win voters' hearts by mentioning peaceful coexistence with the North and unification. But now the North Wind is much weaker. Many people believe it is nothing but hot -- or cold -- air, and that the time is long past when we were influenced by it. "Let the North Wind blow,” they cry. “We are strong enough to brave it."