Call it “the disappearing summit.” That’s how critics in Seoul are describing the planned meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea. Kim Jong-il of North Korea and South Korea’s President Roh Moohyun were supposed to meet this week in Pyongyang. Now, however, the two are figuring on getting together in early October. Mr. Roh appeared to have been surprised by Kim Jong-il’s decision to put off the summit, but the delay fits neatly into scheming to influence South Korea’s presidential election on December 19 in favor of a candidate dedicated to Mr. Roh’s policy of North-South reconciliation.

Although the South Korean constitution bars Mr. Roh from a second term, he clearly hopes the summit will raise his popularity as well as that of his allies. They want to elect a “pan-major-party” candidate representing battling elements of the fragmented party that lofted Mr. Roh to the presidency in the 2002 election as well as remnants of the party of Mr. Roh’s predecessor, Kim Dae-jung. Mr. Roh would dearly like a successor dedicated to his leftist policies as conceived by Kim Dae-jung, whose most memorable feat as president was his meeting with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in June 2000 in the first and only inter-Korean summit.

The controversy over the summit is sure to intensify with the nomination by the opposition party, the Grand National Party of Lee Myung-bak, the former mayor of Seoul whom the North Korean press repeatedly has attacked. Mr. Lee, who made a fortune as the hotshot young chairman of Hyundai Engineering and Construction in its heyday in the 1980s, remains South Korea’s most formidable contender for the presidency despite a past of shady land deals.

The summit, if held in the first few days of October as planned, will polarize conservatives and leftists in Korea — and provide the dynamism that a “pan-major-party” candidate will need to stand up against Mr. Lee, a shrewd and tireless campaigner. Mr. Lee’s popularity rating stands at 35%, far higher than any of his foes but not high enough to insure victory in a last-minute drive spurred on success for Mr. Roh at the summit.

Mr. Kim could, however, cancel the summit entirely if conservative outcries reached a high enough pitch to annoy more voters than it pleased in South Korea. Indeed, Mr. Kim may try to insist, in secret talks with South Korean emissaries, that the government clamp down on demonstrations by conservatives, many of them aging Korean War veterans who have regularly burned his image in effigy. Mr. Kim could also decide against a summit on other pretexts. Among them, punishment for South Korea going through with annual military exercises with American forces this month that North Korea warns could have a “catastrophic” impact on North-South relations. Such rhetoric assumes greater significance in the run-up to the summit — and may have contributed to North Korea’s decision to postpone it.

The ostensible reason for the postponement, of course, is severe flooding that is likely to leave the North in need of 400,000 tons of rice beyond all it’s able to get from China, South Korea, and other sources. Mr. Roh, anxious to keep up the summit momentum, needs to increase emergency shipments in a pre-summit display of goodwill to guarantee the summit really happens.

A number of other factors may also play into Mr. Kim’s final decision on a summit.

The first may be the six-nation talks in which North Korea is under pressure to disclose details on its entire nuclear program as a prelude to bringing it to a complete halt. North Korea stands to receive another 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil as a reward for doing as agreed in addition to 50,000 tons already shipped from South Korea for shutting down its five megawatt reactor at Yongbyon last month.

North Korea, however, has demanded “action for action” — meaning rewards in terms of aid at every step of the process. Mr. Kim also wants to open diplomatic relations with America, come to terms on a peace treaty in place of the armistice that ended the Korean War in July 1953, and get the State Department to remove his fiefdom from its list of “terrorist” nations. U.S. officials, while now willing to talk about such matters, say North Korea must first shut down its nuclear program.

South Korean officials and advisers to Mr. Roh have called for a four-party peace treaty in which China and America join South Korea and North Korea even though South Korea never signed the Korean War armistice. The reason was that South Korea’s president until his ouster in 1960, Syngman Rhee, lambasted the truce for permanently dividing the Korean peninsula, which he had pledged to unite on his own terms.

North Korea has warned that a conservative victory in December would severely damage inter-Korean relations and has attacked Mr. Lee in language reminiscent of its harangues of South Korean conservatives before Kim Dae-jung’s defeat of a conservative foe in December 1997.

For Mr. Kim, the summit may be a gamble on North Korean influence among South Korean leftists, tipping the balance in favor of a malleable successor to Mr. Roh. The gamble, however, could turn into disaster, jeopardizing much needed aid and trade.

Mr. Kirk is a freelance correspondent based in Seoul.