Former South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun, who died Saturday in an apparent suicide, doggedly pursued reconciliation with communist North Korea despite its 2006 nuclear and missile tests.
The following year he held a peace summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang, only the second in the history of the two countries.
Critics said the South gave the North too much for too little in return but Roh always insisted the "sunshine" engagement policy was the best course.
"The key to the peace strategy is the wisdom of co-existence. We should boldly and confidently engage North Korea. Confrontation will achieve nothing," he once said.
Opponents charged that Roh, who held office from 2003-2008, failed to press the North hard enough on its nuclear weapons and poor human rights record.
He urged critics to admit that the North would not easily collapse and to view it as an opportunity rather than a danger.
"To us, North Korea is a vast market in which we can make a great deal of investment," Roh said two weeks after the summit.
"North Korea is not an element of risk, it is simply a very big opportunity for (South) Korea."
At the summit the two leaders agreed to push for sweeping joint economic projects, including a special economic zone around the North's western port of Haeju.
One think tank estimated the projects would cost some 11 billion dollars.
Conservative President Lee Myung-Bak, who took office in February 2008, changed course.
He undertook to review the summit projects and linked major economic aid to progress in the North's nuclear disarmament, a stance which enraged Pyongyang.
Relations are now icy, with the North having cut virtually all contacts with the South.
Cross-border relations worsened still further last month when the North fired a long-range rocket. Pyongyang said the launch put a satellite into orbit, but the US, South Korea and Japan called it a disguised missile test.
Angry at the UN Security Council's condemnation of the launch, the North quit international nuclear disarmament talks and said it would conduct more missile and nuclear tests.
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