Before driving north on Tuesday, Roh had said he wanted the summit to ease tensions and help his impoverished communist neighbour. Yet his first encounter with a dour, unsmiling Kim in Pyongyang on Tuesday did not augur well.
It was a far more affable North Korean leader who turned up on Wednesday ahead of formal talks, television footage showed.
Film-buff Kim's face lit up when he saw gifts from Roh: a painted room screen, high quality tea and a collection of DVDs that included a drama about a royal court cook starring one of Kim's favourite South Korean actresses, Lee Young-ae.
While it is a crime for ordinary North Koreans to watch films from the South, they made an ideal gift for the revered leader.
The atomic deal, almost exactly a year after the North had conducted its first nuclear test, eases domestic and international pressure on Roh to force disarmament concessions out of Kim.
His critics said the visit was aimed more at domestic politics and expected Roh to skirt the nuclear weapons issue and mass human rights abuses so as not to offend his host.
Roh insisted the summit would foster peace on the peninsula, partitioned since the end of World War Two, and help the ruined economy of the North which maintains one of the world's largest standing armies, mostly stationed near their common border.
South Korean officials say only an organic approach will end one of the region's biggest security threats and bring the North in from the cold.
They point to the need to build up the North's economy, which has come close to collapse under Kim, leader since 1994 when he , inherited his position and personality cult from his father.
Few details have leaked out on what the two leaders have discussed other than that they touched on peace and economic cooperation.
South Korean officials said before the summit Seoul could pledge aid worth billions of dollars to rebuild the North's creaking infrastructure and the foes might sign an agreement to ease tensions on the Cold War's last frontier.
Roh is still expected to witness one of the North's typical mass games extravaganzas on Wednesday evening, complete with goose-stepping soldiers, dancing schoolgirls and a large flip card animation section that promotes unification under the North's communist banner.
