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Super Nova? I wonder if the London Stock Exchange thinks so...

I've been scouting around carefully in the papers, knowing absolutely that it would be there somewhere...

And finally, there it was in yesterday's Yomiuri. The word I'd been waiting for. The worst possible thing the Japanese media can say about someone. Even Shoko Asahara, the wicked cult leader of Aum, was never branded with this dreadful term...

"Individualist"

You see, as this rather awful Nova debacle has slowly unfolded, it was becoming just a matter of time before founder of the company, Nozomu Sahashi, became the undisputed villain of the piece. A "malign influence" on Japanese society in the mould of Takafumi Horie. Forget the fact that there were three other members of the board who were, presumably, in a strong position to spot a Y50 billion black hole yawning open in the accounts.

And - perhaps more critically - forget the fact that (apart from the bankruptcy and all that) Sahashi successfully built a huge, buoyant business that gave tens of thousands of young people from the UK, US, Australia and Canada a chance to live and work in Japan without any teaching qualifications. The staff may moan, and the finger-waggers may point to the various oddities of Sahashi's management style, but come on - this guy has essentially been giving a load of university graduates beer money and lodging for 20 years.

Alright, so it all went pear-shaped. Redundancy is a miserable thing, and mass redundancy is especially vile. But it seems utterly wrong to paint an entirely bleak picture of Sahashi. Let alone tar him with the unspeakable "i" word.

But isn't it interesting how "individualist" is used as the ultimate word of criticism here? The concluding sentence in the Yomiuri followed a list of Sahashi's perceived failings as a man and a manager, and then hit the reader with the punch-line: that this terrible rogue was an "individualist". The tirade bore the strong message that it was this overarching character flaw that gave rise to all the other faults. It's just so Japan. Demonise the extrovert to soothe the drones.

This may seem an odd time to say it, but actually, Japan desperately needs more people like Sahashi.  And more people who believe that to be the case. It needs young(ish) risk-takers and people prepared to take visions all the way. Was it supreme hubris and financial folly for him to envisage a Nova branch outside every station in Japan? - absolutely. The same hubris that made Horie believe that Livedoor would become bigger than Sony. Aggressive belief way beyond what young business leaders "should" be aiming for.

But it's precisely those qualities that make interesting, investable companies. Sure, plenty of them fail before they become McDonald's or Dell. But then, some of them become McDonald's or Dell. And yesterday a deal was struck to bring the cut-and-thrust investment atmosphere of London's AIM market to Tokyo. I think any small-cap investor worth his or her salt would probably take a rather different view from the Yomiuri's on the liability and viability of a chief executive who can reasonably be called an "individualist". 

So if the "AIM in Tokyo" project truly happens, and you're an investor faced with a choice of who or what to punt on in Tokyo, what do you do? Do you bet on the conservative team-player with a plodding vision, impeccable background, staid tastes and cautious optimism? Or do you go for the "individualist" so decried by the Japanese establishment - the hyper-ambitious, trailblazing son-of-a-bitch who's either going to create a massive flourishing business or disappear in an explosive financial mess leaving 4,000 people jobless?

I know where my money would be.

Ding Dong Moronically on high...

I take it all back.

For a while there, I may have given the impression that raw commercialism had flitted away from these shores for good and that Japan has lost the will to make money. I may have hinted that the entire sprawl of bureaucracy and once mighty boardrooms of Japan Inc only care about scuttling the ship before either nasty foreigners or (worse!) young Japanese can get their hands on it. But I was wrong.

Because in Ginza (and this may be a world-wide record), Christmas has already started! Yup. I've seen it with my own eyes. By last Friday, Mitsukoshi's main branch on Ginza crossing - the most valuable retail real estate in Japan - had already got the Yuletide bunting out. [Forgive the low-quality evidence on the right]. Trees, fairly lights and a cheerful "Merry Christmas from Mitsukoshi" proudly mark the season of goodwill - October.

I mean, even the ridiculous US waits until after Halloween before giving the shop-fronts the bauble and twinkly light treatment. As I calculate it, Mitsukoshi's decision to get the Xmas decorations up at this spectacularly premature stage - as well as pipping Macy's and Selfridge's to the post by a majestic 6 weeks - means that a little over 15 per cent of Mitsukoshi's year will be spent Christmasified. Crazy enough anywhere; utterly baffling for a country that doesn't really give a hoot about Christmas.

Unless, underneath it all, Mitsukoshi represents some new, thrusting side of Japan I'd been missing.  A side for whom raw, unbridled capitalism is all in a day's work. A cold, calculating aspect of the Japanese business world that cynically sees Christmas for what it is and thinks "hell, if it gets the punters through the door, give me a red hat now and call me Santa Tanaka."

I like this agressive new Japan. It may start with a bit of festive gouging, but who knows what strange new directions it might lead the country? Companies deciding that they don't necessarily need to bury all their loot in debt repayment? The government deciding to give profits a chance? It may be the Xmas egg-nog talking but might it even develop into - ooh I don't know - shareholder interests figuring on the average chief executive's "to do" list...

One of my pals (a big fund manager at a US house) pointed out to me the absurdity of the fact that, despite sub-prime calamity and other potentially disturbing malarkey, there are only two bear markets in the world at the moment. One of them is Japan, the other is Sri Lanka. The latter has unspeakably bloody civil conflict. Japan has gone past  excuses. It has simply chosen the wrong role model.

What it should have done is model itself on Samson, whose astonishing strength and resilience of spirit returned to him once more after a "lost decade" without hair. Instead, Japan has opted for an altogether less dynamic hero as it grumbles into national retirement. It should have gone for Victor Mature, but in the end it cleverly opted for Victor Meldrew. Merry Christmas!

Why Nintendo at Y70,000 a share is bigger than sex

There are some truly dismal moments in life when even the most ardent proponent of free markets is  forced to admit that they don't work. Or at least, they work, and tell us something pretty nasty about ourselves. This post is genuinely about Nintendo, I hasten to add, it just needs a build-up.

I think it's important to acknowledge, at this still early stage in the game, that the whole idea of making pots of cash out of the greying of Japanese society is a myth. It's simply never going to happen. Companies can talk bravely about tapping the retiree Baby Boomers and all their savings and optimistically forecast how silver-haired tourism is going to be a sure-fire money-spinner for spas and railway companies up and down the country. They can even, as I heard from Yamaha at the Tokyo Motor Show yesterday, design four-wheeled hogs with geriatric Hell's Angels in mind.

But, come on. None of it is actually going to work. Like an embittered nurse in an old people's home, Japan is simply putting a brave face on a terrible job.

Here, in all its slipper-shuffling, half-moon spectacled misery is the truth about Japan's demographics: the Sanatogen Armageddon has already begun and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are thundering into town - Stinginess, Prudery, Conservatism and Insularity.

Tokyo Motor Show: a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a spandex mini-skirt...

I love this event. I love wandering around enjoying the accuracy of casual racial prejudices towards different automakers. You hear the phrase “Aaaaand introducing the all-clean, all-green fuel cell Pipo” and you automatically know it’s the Japanese.

A few paces further on, you hear smoothly uttered cobblers emanating from some pearly-toothed snake-oil salesman “offering you a massively enhanced purchase experience” and know absolutely that it’s GM flogging a soccer-mom tank with the same fuel efficiency as a Chinese concrete factory.

There are many reasons why the TMS is so much fun, but I think the main one is that the Japanese quietly treat it as one gigantic piss-take. It’s the single biggest annual event for a sector that is arguably the beating heart and soul of the Japanese industrial story and yet, before the eyes of the world, the Japanese just play the whole thing for laughs.

Striding past the daft three-wheeled people carriers with sliding patio doors, you realise with a chill that Japan does irony. And does it bloody well.

There was, I promise, a Toyota car with so much lacy lilac coachwork and floral garnish that what should have been a bold glimpse of the future looked like Liberace’s boudoir after a tasteful makeover by my great auntie Shai.

I suspect that a lot of Japan’s comfort with this arises from the general confidence of its car  companies. Domestic market in a bit of a slump? Well there’s two billion people living next door who want cars. Oil supplies running short and costing $90 a barrel? Nya nya… we've got better fuel cells and hybrid technologies than all of you. Even the (probably temporary) loss of the “world’s biggest carmaker” crown to GM last week has probably done no harm to Toyota – this is, after all, a country that likes nothing better than sniping at the future from second place.

But as I wandered deeper into the show, an old and terrible fury was awoken within me. I was suddenly reminded of the great deception of my youth: the innovative, technology-rich utopia promised by Tomorrow’s World dangled like a carrot, only to find myself beaten by the same stick every damn time – “of course, at this stage, this is just a concept”.

Call me blinkered, but what, in the name of Wotan and Thor, is a “concept” car?

Four reasons why vending machines are better than the Japanese civil service

I was recently at a barbecue with a senior vice-president of Coca-Cola Japan called Alberto. A lovely  fellow. We roamed through the thorny issue of sugar-free canned-coffee and the difficulty of building a new green-tea brand before ending-up on the ever-popular subject of vending machines.

Real vending machines. Not the ones that feature in every crass shorthand journalistic sketch of Japan produced since the 80s... 

Now, most foreigners come to Japan and tend to be rather impressed by the prevalence, variety and general entertainment value of vending machines. Not Alberto. He took the view that, but dispensing their product from a chute at the bottom of the machine, they were taking a astonishing liberty with their customers. "The machine exists to satisfy me," he concluded, his cheeseburger quivering in his hand and veins popping on his forehead, "I pay for the drink and this device forces me - me! - to bend down like a bloody servant!"

I, on the other hand, rather like vending machines. So much, in fact, that I would actually rather THEY were running Japan than the time-rich, ideas-poor poltroons who actually control the show from the caves of Kasumigaseki. So here goes. Four reasons why Japan's 2.6 million beverage-only vending machines deserve a shot at government:

A structural B(e)ar Market...

Property prices outside Tokyo Station may be lurching north and the lunchtime grub scene is undoubtedly  better than it was two years ago. But things in Marunouchi are about to get very, very nasty. A big, dirty turf war is about to break out. And it's all Citigroup's fault.

You see, on Tuesday, after the long weekend is over and everyone gets back from their little villas in Hakuba, there's going to be a bar-fight. Not a drunken brawl (yet), but a long war of attrition, over where everyone is going to go for that first post-work pint every day. The scene used to be pretty clear - all nicely divided - but on Tuesday, Citigroup's equity sales boys and girls move into Marunouchi. There aren't enough bars to go around, and it ain't their manor...

Marunouchi has already been nicely carved-up. UBS and Mizuho (along with The Times) down their neck-oil in a revolting little glory hole called Drunk Bears. Nomura and Barclays Capital (obviously) slake their thirst in Grand Central downstairs. JP Morgan have got the very pleasant PCM Bar at the foot of their building and Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ tend to head to that grim little Irish place in the basement. But the problem is that NONE of these places can support a major influx of thirsty Citigroup boozers.

So where are the Citigroup chieftains going to go? Akasaka, being bloody great for bars, has rather spoilt them. The places inside the Shin Maru Biru where they now live are OK but not really the place for a wind-down slug. It's anybody's guess...

The Roh 'n Kim show part X: epiphany at Gimpo and those summit highlights

Forget my lovely Nissan Skyline 350 Coupe, forget the new 700-series Bullet Train, forget (would you believe it) the yellow Lamborghini of Teal'c: there's only one vehicle in the world I want to be in right now and that's the train (purrrr) that is going to be carrying the joint North-South Korean cheerleader team to the Beijing Olympics next year. The one grandly agreed upon today by the grinning Roh and the  grimacing Kim.

The price of a ticket, I suppose, is choosing which of two fairly nutty regimes you want to root for and then training like stink to do backflips, flag-waving and handstands for the next 10 months. Hmmm. Curiously unappealing...and yet...

Anyway, on to the interesting stuff. No, not the declaration in Pyongyang that ended this three-day shebang with glittering generalities and meaningless memos. I'm talking about the sight - almost goose-bumpy - that greeted me when I headed back to Gimpo airport this evening.

(Prime) Time, gentlemen, please...

Now, all of this needs to be understood in the following context: back in 2000, at the first North-South summit, everyone in South Korea was glued to their televisions. Excited. Breathless. Brimming with optimism. The coverage, across all the channels showing the Kim cavalcade back then, received the   part of 70% viewing figures. This time, South Koreans couldn't really give a damn. Jaded. Disappointed. Better things to do. At the peak of the summit this week, only 14% of South Korean TVs were tuned to the Roh 'n Kim show. (In the North, of course, the event was not covered at all).

So where were all those viewers this time? Well, I know where 2,150 of them were...

The Ron 'n Kim show Part IX: what's the big deal? And where's Mrs Kim?

I'm still enjoying the transcripts from yesterday and the brilliant taunt by Kim when he made his surprise lunch offer to Roh and it was met with a wavering gulp. "Can't you make a decision, Mr President?"

The more you think about it, the more the entire "relaxed lunch" invitation charade was probably constructed simply as a vehicle for delivering that line. Perhaps the entire summit was even agreed to by Pyongyang as the set-up for that single gag. Roh's retort was something along the lines of "I can make big decisions, but not little ones" - it's not bad, but I'm sure that along with the rest of us, the perfect come-back will occur to Roh when he's on the motorway back to Seoul...

So, in the space of just a few hours, the prevailing flimsiness of this summit has been brought into fairly sharp relief. In what should probably be seen as a pretty substantial advance in the Six Party Talks - the big-boy conference where the real work on nuclear disarmament gets done - the participants have produced a joint statement that would effectively see the DPRK disabling its reprocessing plant at Yongbyon by the end of the year.

It was a fascinating message from the Hermit Kingdom: Kim may physically be in Pyongyang winding-up  Roh and giving South Korean conservatives all the more fodder to despise their outgoing president, but his main diplomatic attention is in Beijing, laying the groundwork for the relationship with Washington that he has always secretly craved.

In that context, anything announced this morning as the culmination of the oddity-packed North-South summit will have to be pretty hefty to compete as a serious diplomatic advance. Nobody really expects too much, and given Roh's reference yesterday to a "wall of distrust" between himself and the Dear Leader, that's probably wise.

But the entrail-readers of North Korean symbolism have got a bigger mystery on their hands at the moment. Where is Mrs Kim?

It's less of a "so what?" than one might imagine. Whether or not Kim is ill, drunk or hale and hearty, the question of succession is a growing one. Rows of grim-looking uniforms and shoddy suits have been positioned in key places throughout the summit, but the clues as to who is in favour within the regime at the moment are achingly nuanced. Less subtle, of course, would have been the appearance of a wife - perhaps the mother of one of the three sons the Dear Leader - a legendary ladies' man - has supposedly sired.

Kim has had had four companions in his time but none of them have ever shown their face with him in  public. Which leads me to be very, very concerned for the future security of Lee Young-ae, the South Korean actress whose DVDs Kim was yesterday handed a joblot of. Worth noting, of course, that the DVDs Kim is presumably now salivating over are illegal for North Koreans. I suppose Kim must first watch these DVDs repeatedly, frame-by-frame, to establish whether they are too seditious to allow his people to see.

The problem is that when Kim really takes a shine to someone from the South - as he did with the film-director Shin Sang-ok - he has a way of, er, abducting them and forcing them to do his bidding until they can escape. By leaving his wife out of summit proceedings, is the Dear Leader perhaps sending a subtle message to Ms Lee - "look at me baby...frisky, twice the diplomat that Roh is, armed to the teeth and...single.

The Roh 'n Kim show part VIII: Malice in Wonderland

Quite apart from the nose-picking incident and the snub and counter-snub of today's summit meeting, the sheer, un-parsable curiosity of this event has been both a joy and a chill to watch. I have not, I think, fallen into the traditional traps when describing North Korea. I don't, for example, share the view of some observers that Kim is "mad".

But a mad-hatter's tea party it certainly is. If craziness could be given a debt-rating, this country would have the triple-A creditworthiness of a Swiss Bank (not UBS, obviously, but you know what I mean).

The visiting South Korean delegation was given wonderful tours through Potemkin Village-type facilities and factories all screaming with economic backwardness and dysfunction. Despair dressed in the sad robes fantasy popped-up at every turn. South Korea's first lady was shown a school room with lipsticked girls chanting a traditional song. It was as heart-breaking as it was sinister.

The Roh 'n Kim show part VII: The nose pick of international diplomacy and the offer Roh COULD refuse

Unbelievable!

Refusing to stay an extra day in Pyongyang at the invitation of the world's most enigmatic dictator is one thing. Getting caught picking your nose is quite another....

President Roh Moo-hyun has, whether through his own design or sheer good luck, managed to put himself in a truly extraordinary position. Despite a presidency in some measure of disgrace and a genuinely vexed body of the general public who think South Korea is selling the farm to appease the Dear Leader, Roh is nevertheless on the doorstep of history.

And yet, he keeps seeming to forget that during this summit he is on camera the whole time, everywhere. Yesterday it was the arse-stroking of the North Korea maiden and his inability to spot that cameras were all around him and had a clear view of his wandering paws. Today, just seconds after Kim left him and headed back to his office after the talks, Roh clearly forgot that the cameras were still running. It only lasted a second, but there it was - a brief excavation of the right nostril, a surreptitious flick of the retrieved material and a wonderful guffaw from the press corps sitting watching the whole thing on 3m-high giant cinema screens back in Seoul. And some wag in made sure the tape was rewound three times so we could all watch the incident again.

Whatever the nature of the deal due to be announced tomorrow, it is more likely than not going to be about peace on the peninsula - and if it really happens, it would be a seriously big deal. Yes, yes, it would need the signatures and approval of the US and China, it might be hot air and so forth, but, like the Good Friday Agreement, it will be a critical starting-point. 

The Roh n' Kim show part VI: the third "blimey!"

Well I never. It's not often the Hermit Kingdom actually encourages people to come and stay, but these are perhaps more exciting times than anyone had realised...

A government flack has just charged into the room and told us that, during their second session of talks this afternoon, Kim suggested to Roh that he stay in Pyongyang another day. And, seriously, what the hell else has Roh got to do right now?

All sorts of protocol officers need to be consulted, say the flacks, which is why Roh didn't say "yes" immediately after Kim made his invitation. Word is that if Roh stays an extra day, there will be the opportunity for a nice relaxed lunch between the two leaders. Perhaps a discussion about the relative merits of North vs South Korean kimchi.

The South Koreans are, apparently, interpreting this as Kim's own personal desire to prolong the talks - fodder for those who believe the theory that this summit is going to produce some sort of peace deal by the two Koreas and seal Roh's legacy as the man who ended the war that has divided the peninsula for nearly six decades. We haven't yet been told whether or not Roh has accepted this offer - I'm sure we will in a moment.

This is, of course, being spun as the "reality" of the situation that everyone failed to report yesterday. We were wrong, it seems, to suggest that the yesterday's stiff meeting between the two leaders was anything other than cordial, warm and productive.

The Roh 'n Kim show part VI: deal or no deal?

Gosh presidents say some daft things.

So Roh finally gets to sit in a room with Kim and look terribly presidential. This is, after all, what the summit is all about. And what does the smirking statesman go for as his opening gambit?  That it was nice coming to Pyongyang because there was no time-lag like there was on his other big presidential adventures abroad. Strewth.

But the talks are underway. Rumours abound that there is going to be a "peace deal" announced in the small hours of tomorrow.

Even if it were just a single-page memo of grand phrases and empty pleasantries, it would be the very scrap of paper that Roh has come for. Something to take home and proudly show his now quite irritated  and disappointed public in South Korea. Something to prove that seven years worth of lobbing cash and and other economic aid over the 38th Parallel has been anything other than a spectacularly ineffective pissing-away of money. Something to tell the kids daddy did in the war...

For the two Koreas are, of course, still technically at war. Any peace deal announced as a result of this summit is about as binding as 10-year old Velcro. The UN (in practical terms, the US) would need to sign-off on any actual peace treaty between the two nations, and you can bet the process would be a good deal more complicated and legal than whatever Messrs Kim and Roh can hammer-out today. But it will be dramatic, and it will be a start.

The Roh 'n Kim show Part V: Perkier, Merrier, Chattier

Apparently, what with Roh in town and all that, the Dear Leader couldn't see the point of "lazing around at home". He is not - and he emphasised this very clearly - "a patient".

Now, I've seen some violent mood swings in my time, but today's appearance by the Dear Leader was the second "blimey" of the North-South Summit. With his liver problems and all that, I'm sure Kim has stopped drinking as heavily as he is reputed to have done in the past (er..). But if I didn't know better, I'd say this was a tyrant who had, by Wednesday, recovered fully from the hangover that slowed him down and left him slack-jawed on Tuesday.

I jest. But the change really was an eye-popper. Gone was sour, dour, expressionless and icy Kim Jong Il we saw on the red carpet yesterday. In his place was the masterful old despot we've come to recognise. Smiling, animated and, to some extent, lighter on his feet. The body language was less pained. The demeanour, if not exactly amicable, was certainly less of a snub to president Roh.

And, for the first time that anyone can remember, Kim actually referred to his health in public. Very, very interesting. He must have read some of the international coverage of his little display yesterday and judged that, rather than coming across as a flint-hearted, domineering man of iron, his act meant he came across to the world as a heavily-medicated zombie.

So it may just have been a piece of clever recovery-PR. What was going on with this extraordinary switch will, I'm sure, remain a mystery. Pyongyang-watchers will doubtless read much into the fact that Kim felt the need to dismiss rumours of his ill health. He must know about the currency achieved by recent rumours about heart surgery. Once again, we're left with the "expertise" of the entrail-readers outside the DPRK to tell us what they think is going on in the mind of a tyrant that quite possibly nobody on earth fully understands.

The Roh 'n Kim show part IV: it matters to matter...

I’ve been commandeered as a hapless stooge of the sinister Korean propaganda machine!

Astonishingly, though, it’s the South Koreans that have snapped me unawares and made me their little poster-boy.

So I bowled up to the Lotte Hotel press centre again this morning, ready for another day of the Roh n’ Kim show at the huge press centre they have organised here and was handed a copy of Summit News – the official daily of the 2007 North-South Korean Summit.

There, on the back page of this highly-produced rag is picture of me, a journo pal called Andy Salmon, and (in the middle-distance) the Reuters chap. I’m looking upwards at a huge screen, enraptured. Above me reads the headline: Summit Steals International Limelight.

Lovely, but, I fear, cobblers.

You see, the photie suggests that the room was packed with international hacks, when it really, really wasn’t. That shot was, logistically, the only possible way that you could have pictured three foreign journalists in the same frame. And the only reason Andy and I are apparently gazing so reverently to the skies is because the massive screen was about two feet away from our desk. My neck still hurts…

I also happen to know that there really isn’t the international interest in this summit that there was for the 2000 version. Sure, it’s delivered plenty of colour and those tantalising glimpses of the Dear Leader, but nobody (including Roh’s people) are really pinning much hope on the event. Even rumours of a peace deal are being played-down.

But hack after South Korean hack have been rolling up to the few foreign journalists who are here to cover the summit and asking us the same thing: “what does this summit mean to the outside world and what do you think of it?”

One of them nervously asked me yesterday: “why is it that there are only 81 foreign journalists registered for this, when there were 172 registered to cover the summit seven years ago?”

I dunno… Burma? Cynicism? Putin? A jaded sense of reality….? It’s a good question, and I think they are absolutely right to wonder why an attempt to hold friendly talks across the most heavily-defended border in the world (and with a man who has recently test-fired a nuke and a load of ballistic missiles) is not at the top of everyone’s agenda.

There are two things going on with the PR here. First is the desire by Roh that this summit should be his political swansong, not tombstone. Comparisons between the 2000 summit and this one – particularly when we all reported Kim Jong Il’s curiously stand-offish behaviour yesterday – were rapped by the South Korean government flacks this morning.

The second thing that often gets forgotten is how much, for South Korea, it matters to matter. This is a place with an admirably expansive view of its global importance. It matters deeply that the rest of the world share that opinion.

It’s odd: this picture and article was a piece of spin that, had it come from North Korea, would be roundly mocked as the desperate fantasy of a dictatorship losing its grip on reality.

The Roh n' Kim show part III: Enter the Dear Leader

High Noon in Pyongyang and Kim Jong Il has appeared!

Looking terrible.

This was Grade-A bizarre. I mean, even by Korean peninsula standards, this was difficult to parse. Kim looked, for want of a better phrase, "out of it" - suggesting perhaps that his policy towards the re-unification of Korea was more "moonshine" than "sunshine".

Walking a little awkwardly and with his left shoulder slightly hunched, Kim showed none of the vim or bonhomie he displayed at the last summit seven years ago. There were no joking asides spilling from his lips and none of that effortless - almost jolly - mastery of the situation the old tyrant exuded back in 2000 when he met Kim Dae Jung. He exhibited no particular friendliness to his visitor: not only did Kim's face never crack a real smile, it hardly cracked any expression at all.

Beyond a stiff, dispassionate handshake with Roh, Kim appeared completely disengaged from the proceedings. His left arm seemed to hang limply at his flank as he walked and, as he proceeded side-by-side with Roh past the welcoming committee, barely a word passed between them. Roh was waving to his audience of roaring North Korean "well-wishers", but Kim - a supposed master of working a crowd - barely acknowledged his people. At the risk of plunging further into the crazy depths of Kremlinology, I noticed that when Kim applauded something, only his right hand actually seemed to do the clapping.

The commentary I was listening to - a direct translation of the South Korean broadcast - had some gems in it. I particularly liked the line "Well, we can't see the two leaders right now, but I can only assume that Chairman Kim is greeting President Roh with warmth and passion," followed, naturally, by a shot of Roh grinning goofily and Kim staring sourly into the middle distance. In what one government flack told me was a "considerable" departure from the pattern of the 2000 summit, Kim and Roh travelled away from the event in separate cars. Last time, the two Kims spent the same hour-long journey chatting together in the back of Kim's limo.

Great medical minds, I'm sure, will be draughted in by the South Korean commentators and other media to assess the Dear Leader's health based on this brief appearance. The paunch was still there, for example, but it was clear he had lost weight. Above all, even as a non-medical observer, it struck me that these ten minutes of exposure are going to ignite speculation over Kim's succession as never before.

But in spite of it all,  this was the moment that Seoul must have been praying for. It was only a few stolen minutes in front of a crowd of jiggling, cheering stooges and a goose-stepping honour guard, but as the opening shot of a summit that is all about appearances, President Roh badly needed this Kim-endorsed jamboree.

By Kim's merely turning up, the summit (as Seoul will doubtless spin this mid-day encounter later today) has been stamped with the Dear Leader's seal of legitimacy. Actual achievements at the negotiating table may be slight, but it no longer matters. By coming out for a red-carpet meeting with Roh on his arrival in Pyongyang, Kim has effectively recognised that the event is happening at all. It's a small victory for Roh, but an important one.

The Roh n' Kim show part II: known unknowns...

"We can now expect another unexpected appearance from Kim Jong Il", buzzed an excitable interpreter  over my headset just now, followed by the excellent: "I believe President Roh will receive flowers from two female women."

It's genuinely tense stuff as the cameras have flicked over to live coverage of the April 25th Plaza square in Pyongyang and President Roh's expected arrival.

The soldiers have been led in by a man with a quaint machine-gun that belongs in an Untouchables episode. They are now being inspected by a severe-looking chap who seems pleased with the turn-out.

Behind them is a large stand with a few thousand North Koreans perched upon it. The word is that there are 600,000 more lining the streets of Pyongyang. Hmmm. The women are in national dress, the men in sober suits. All are clutching plastic branches of pink flowers. They just had a nice little practice wave because guess who's lurching along the red carpet...

The Roh n' Kim show Part I: crossing the line in Kaesong

This North-South Korean summit show was always going to be a scorcher, and it's already started on   superb form with a good, old-fashioned dawn arse-grabbing...

Yes, yes...in political and economic terms, expectations for this summit have been (quite rightly) set pretty low. But the heady promise of sensational spectacle has hung in over this bunfight like the heady reek of Blue Stratos in the 1980s. Put it like this: you have a South Korean president desperate to create a legacy during his last few months at the helm, and a North Korean dictator who really doesn't give a fig what Roh says, does or proffers but will undoubtedly use the summit for some high-profile larking about. It is, if you will, a case of "When Hurry met Silly".

Now, it's reasonably early in the morning and I may be a bit blurry, but I have a delicious feeling that I've just seen the first "blimey!" of Roh's Great North Run.

Within moments of completing his 30 yard walk over the border, the President of South Korea posed for a photograph with his wife on one side and a North Korean stunner in traditional dress on the other. The old dog's hand briefly brushed the latter's posterior before realising that the relentless glare of the world's media was capturing the scene in minute detail. Genius.

He moved his hand swiftly up the girl's back to a more dignified level, but the minute slip was there and must surely be viewed as significant. This was, after all, his first act on North Korean soil - a moment that should have been charged with dignity and history. He is only the second South Korean leader to head over into the Hermit Kingdom, and the first to do so on foot.

Before the crossing, Roh stopped for his second gravitas-charged speech of the day - not totally unlike the procrastinating spiels Bond-villains deliver before attempting to kill their nemesis. "As the President of South Korea, I'm going to cross the Military Demarcation Line on foot and I hope lots of people will follow suit," he said. Then he hesitated again. 

The brief, emotional pause before Roh stepped over the Military Demarcation Line (as opposed to the Moral Demarcation Line he transgressed a moment later), was a weighty moment for the troubled peninsula - Roh's slip of the paw a few minutes afterwards brought the whole scene down to the level of Ealing farce.   

I mean, if it is about anything, this is a summit all about symbolism. Roh left the Blue House in Seoul this morning with a preposterous collection of black limos, police motorbikes, lorries, buses and angry-looking vans of the sort the A-Team used to cavort about in. "Motorcade" is not a term I like at the best of times, and it doesn't begin to describe what was growling darkly through the emptied boulevards of Seoul this morning. This was a spit-shined armada of more than 40 vehicles - a sinister parade designed to scream an opening message to the North: look at us, commies! we've got petrol...