By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
More than seven in 10 South Korean people think the second inter-Korean summit between President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jongil was successful, a survey said Sunday.
Roh's public approval rating has soared to 40 percent, up 10 percentage points from before the Oct. 2-4 summit in Pyongyang, it said.
According to an opinion poll conducted by the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, on Oct. 6, 74 percent of respondents said they think the summit talks were fruitful, while 21 percent were negative on the outcome.
The poll of 1,012 adults over 19 has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
About 62 percent said they think the summit has produced more concrete achievements compared with the 2000 summit between former President Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il. Some 30 percent said, however, the Roh-Kim summit had not made further progress than the first summit, which laid the groundwork for inter-Korean reconciliation through cross-border business projects.
Twenty-seven percent of respondents said no agreement on repatriation of South Korean abductees and prisoners of war was the biggest loophole of the summit, while 15.5 percent said Pyongyang's lukewarm commitment to full denuclearization was a shortcoming.
In a joint declaration issued at the end of the three-day talks, Roh and Kim pledged joint efforts to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. They also agreed to conduct several South Korean-backed big-budget business projects including the construction of a ``special peace and cooperation zone'' around the West Sea, where a new industrial complex is to be built.
The Hyundai Research Institute on Friday estimated the business pledges would cost South Korea more than $11 billion, almost half North Korea's annual gross domestic product.
The summit has resuscitated the approval rating for Roh, who had seen this falling nearing the end of his term in office because of a series of scandals involving presidential aides.
The survey showed 43.3 percent said Roh was doing well, while 53.2 percent said he was not. In an August survey, Roh received support of 33.6 percent.
Former Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, a presidential hopeful of the pro-government United New Democratic Party (UNDP), will be the biggest beneficiary from the results of the summit, 30.8 percent anticipated.
About 13 percent said the summit will be useful for former Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak's presidential campaign, while nine percent expected former Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan of the UNDP to capitalize on the summit effect.
But most respondents said the former Seoul mayor should be the next president. Lee won 53.9 percent support, followed by Chung with 8.8 percent and former Gyeonggi Governor Sohn Hak-kyu of the UNDP with 5.2 percent.
Receiving an average of 60 percent support, Lee Myung-bak swept simulated three-way races with Chung Dong-young, Sohn Hak-kyu, Lee Hae-chan and Kwon Young-ghill of the Democratic Labor Party, according to the survey.