Hu arrives for South Korea summit

SEOUL (AFP) - Chinese President Hu Jintao, basking in the success of a spectacular Olympic Games, arrived in South Korea on Monday for talks set to focus on trade and North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
Hu received a red-carpet welcome at the presidential Blue House, inspecting honour guards in traditional and modern dress and smiling and shaking hands with groups of schoolchildren.
He then began summit talks with his counterpart Lee Myung-Bak, who was expected to seek China's help in easing tense inter-Korean relations and persuading the North to make progress on scrapping its nuclear weapons.
The two leaders, meeting for the third time since Lee took office in February, were also to discuss broadening their relationship beyond economic issues and to witness the signing of a variety of cooperation deals.
"His South Korean trip, (coming) the very day after the closing of the Beijing Olympics, will demonstrate ever-closer bilateral relations," presidential spokesman Lee Dong-Kwan said.
China is a longstanding ally of the impoverished hard-line communist North and a crucial donor of food and fuel.
Inter-Korean relations are at their lowest ebb for a decade after Lee took office and promised to take a firmer line with the North. Official contacts have been cut off.
Six-nation nuclear negotiations chaired by China and including the two Koreas, the United States, Russia and Japan have also hit a snag.
As part of a deal reached last year the North has handed over details of its plutonium-based nuclear programme, but cannot agree with the United States on ways to verify it.
The dispute is delaying efforts to move on to the final phase of the pact, under which the North is supposed to dismantle its atomic plants and hand over all nuclear weapons and material.
Several dozen protesters had both praise and censure for Beijing, displaying placards congratulating it on the Olympics alongside others denouncing its repatriation of North Korean refugees.
The North Korean defectors and rights activists gathered in the centre of Seoul with signs reading "Stop brutality!" and "No repatriation to North Korea!"
International rights groups have also criticized China's policy of treating the refugees as economic migrants, noting that they often face harsh punishment on their return.
"The Chinese government repatriates them, knowing very well how they will be treated in the North," said Han Chang-Kweon, chairman of the Association of North Korean Defectors, who came to Seoul in 1994.
China repatriates at least 100 North Korean defectors every week, with measures becoming stricter during the Olympic Games, demonstrators told Yonhap news agency.
Lee and Hu, at their first summit in Beijing in late May, agreed to upgrade relations to form a "strategic cooperative partnership." They also met on August 9 in Beijing after Lee attended the Olympics opening ceremony.
China is South Korea's largest trade partner with total trade worth more than 145 billion dollars last year. The two sides are studying a possible free trade agreement.
But Seoul presidential officials say Monday's meeting will aim to broaden ties into non-economic sectors.
The two sides were to sign memorandums on closer cooperation in energy conservation, the prevention of desertification, trade information networking, technology, food safety and education.
"Yellow dust," originating in China's Gobi Desert and coated with pollutants en route, is a frequent springtime irritant in South Korea, which has sent volunteers to plant trees in the desert.