Work toward peace, reconciliation and unification on the Korean peninsula is reaching a productive intensity.

Prime-ministerial talks are under way in Seoul for the first time since 1992. The North's premier came south, a big step. An envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and 150 Anglican world leaders spent three days in North Korea last week, where there were 50 Anglican churches before the division.

This flurry of activity follows an October summit meeting between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in his capital city, Pyongyang, the second summit ever for Korean heads of state. Other bilateral talks and pledges by Kim to disable a nuclear plant proceed as well.

Peace, yes. Reconciliation, one can hope. Unification, I have my doubts. Two out of three isn't bad.

I would have more confidence in the devoutly desired unification of a bitterly divided land if the children of the Korean diaspora were not so ambivalent.

All of the heartbreak from a tragic past and deep skepticism about the future were on display Monday evening at a forum of The National Unification Advisory Council Seattle Chapter. The council chapter, which covers four Western states, has 74 members who serve two-year terms on a panel that is enshrined in South Korea's constitution and led by the president.

Any gathering of Korean-Americans is full of family stories of war casualties, hasty exiles from the north, and extended family members left behind. Tortuous routes to the United States during and after a war more than a half century ago. Decades of dislocation and resettlement in a new land.

They brought a tenacity of spirit, capacity for work and a respect for education that filled a hotel banquet room with graduate and professional degrees, business owners, community leaders and elected officials.

There is also evident pride in the modern society that rose from the ashes in South Korea. The world's 12th-largest economy and its robust democratic government sits across a demilitarized zone from a totalitarian basket case frozen in place for 62 years since the end of World War II.

One is enormously prosperous, the other dirt poor. One is lighting a digital path to the future and the other, in satellite photos, is pitch black at night.

Korean-Americans and their friends and relatives in the south worry unification will ruin a good thing.

After last month's summit, President Roh assured his citizens unification via war or absorption would not happen. Think of the money being sent to the north as an investment, he counseled, not an expense. A parliamentary committee estimated the cost of a hasty unification at $1.3 trillion.

No one buys the obvious analogies. West Germany's embrace of the East drained a strong economy for a decade. Market socialism transformed China, and eventually helped Vietnam. Backward, stunted North Korea looks hopeless.

The economic gap between North and South is too great to overcome without destroying all that has been achieved.

Indeed, events have already recast the discussion in ways that ought to scare the pants off folks in Busan union halls and D.C. think tanks.

A delegate to last month's summit said the Korean War was never mentioned. Take the hint. No one should expect an apology from the North for its 1950 invasion as part of any peace agreement.

Note the second point in the joint declaration from the summit. The two governments agreed not to interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Angry about North Korean human-rights violations? Pipe down.

Focus instead on the commitment to expand inter-Korean economic cooperation. For example, finish the first phase of the Kaesong Industrial Complex to move from about 20,000 North Korea workers at 45 South Korean firms, to get to a five-year goal of 500,000 workers at 2,000 companies.

South Korea will build shipyards in the north at Nampho and Anbyon harbors on the West and East seas. Abundant land and cheap labor. The plan is to build the complex pieces elsewhere and use North Koreans to assemble the parts. How strange is that? Oops, never mind.

Imagine a kind of economic osmosis that yields a hybrid commonwealth. They begin as very different places. Consider a summit ritual.

The Yonhap News Agency reported that President Roh presented his host with gifts including an eight-fold screen, a set of tea cups and dishes and videos of popular South Korean dramas and documentaries. Kim gave Roh four tons of mushrooms.

"Our Wish is Unification" is a wistful song that without translation speaks of distant loved ones held close to the heart. The head dictates a different path.

Lance Dickie is a columnist for The Seattle Times. Reach him at ldickie@seattletimes.com.