U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright's recent remark that "my glasses aren't rose-colored" when it comes to North Korea has touched a deep chord in South Korea. The pace and productiveness of North-South exchanges has noticeably slowed since the summer, and off-again, on-again North-South meetings on economic and military cooperation and family reunions have taken the gloss off a successful summit, raising public concern and resulting in sharp criticism of the government for being overly solicitous of the North.

While this has been officially ascribed to "gridlock in Pyongyang," there may be deeper causes at work, perhaps reminiscent of the kind of cold peace that currently prevails between Egypt and Israel. This is not a model Korea can afford to follow, although it will be difficult to avoid.

Like North and South Korea, those two Middle Eastern states are cheek to jowl. To a visitor, the border crossing at Eilat (Israel)/Tabai(Egypt) appears quite normal. No more than 100 meters separates the guard posts, but unlike in the joint security area at Panmunjom, no weapons are visible. There is even daily bus service between Cairo and Tel Aviv, while none links Seoul and Pyongyang. The two cities are disconcertingly disconnected, even though they are less than half as far apart as the Egyptian and Israeli capitals.

Despite the two Koreas' common ancestry, the vast differences in history, culture and religion are the principal reasons for the cold peace prevailing between them. Koreans have only 50 years of history to overcome, but their task will not be an easy one. To escape the cold peace, they must overcome the Korean War and its causes. Without a clear-eyed and firm commitment to reconciliation, demonstrated through deeds and not just words, and the acknowledgment that there is more to gain through cooperation than conflict, a warm peace will remain a distant dream.

The first step is understanding that the Korean War was the triggering event, not the first cause of conflict. The deeper explanation resides in factional and ideological struggles and the intense regional and political rivalries endemic to Korean politics that go back a century or more to the demise of the Hermit Kingdom of King Kojong.

During the last century, the March 1 movement against Japanese rule resulted in a diaspora of Korea's political elite and the hardening of ideological divisions that have never healed. Conservatives fled to Chungking to form a Korean Provisional Government, while others went north to fight with Mao Zedong's guerrillas. Still others, such as North Korea's future leader, Kim Il Sung, threw in their lot with Stalin's Russia, engaging in hit-and-run tactics against the Japanese from bases in Manchuria. Finally, there were those, such as South Korea's future president Syngman Rhee, who freelanced in the United States, ostensibly on behalf of the Korean Provisional Government. When the members of this exiled elite poured back into liberated Korea in 1945, they took up old battles with renewed vigor even as the Soviets and Americans squared off as rival occupying powers.

In a sense, for the successful summer summit to bear fall fruit, participants must go back to the future in order to transcend it. For those who fought the Korean War and those whose families are still divided, this is a searingly emotional moment. Can they make peace with former adversaries, emulating Yitzhak Rabin's injunction to "make peace with one's enemies, not with one's friends?" For some, it is impossible. That is the position of a significant segment of the conservative opposition in South Korea, who want to slow down or, if possible, reverse the process of reconciliation.

For them, Kim Dae Jung is seen as having been "taken in" by the North, "sold a bill of goods" by his younger, more confident counterpart, eager to reap his own personal peace dividend -- the Nobel Peace Prize. This fissure has always existed. Summary executions were common in the South; it was a customary and accepted method of settling political scores, not unlike the lynching of blacks in the American South after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. It is what makes the pre-Korean past so relevant to understanding contemporary political developments, and why Pyongyang's invitation to Korean political parties and social organizations to attend commemorative ceremonies for the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers Party put Seoul on the spot. While the ruling party and opposition turned down the invitation, nongovernmental organizations and a splinter leftist party were granted government approval to make the trip.

The most important question in South Korea today is what a new consensus -- the present coming to terms with the past -- will look like. At the same time, it is impossible to know to what extent North Korea is playing to pre-existing divisiveness in South Korea -- "free-riding" as it were, on Kim Dae Jung's engagement policy, for ulterior motives -- or whether it is an inevitable part of a new consensus-building process.

The real dilemma for South Korea is that there is no comparable process going on in the North, where a Stalinist-style dictatorship still holds sway. There is no concept of free speech, which makes it hard to see how such notions as a Korean Confederation or variants thereof could exist except on paper. Of course, members of the National Assembly of South Korea and the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea might pose together for the camera, but that, by itself, won't reduce the conceptual divide, resolve difficult issues of political legitimacy or heal the encrusted hostility of decades.

In sum, we are pointed in a new direction -- toward peace and away from war -- but we are only at the beginning of a difficult and painful journey.

Moving in a new direction will inevitably result in fundamental change in both inter-Korean relations and the existing political process in South Korea and produce a new consensus in which the two Koreas, rather than external powers, will be the primary actors. This will also involve taking risks for the sake of reconciliation that some may judge too great. Unfortunately, however, this is inherent in the nature of the challenge that lies ahead.