The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, has secretly invited South Korea’s President to a summit meeting in Pyongyang, in a further sign of his regime’s new drive to engage with the outside world, The Times has learnt.

But the invitation is causing embarrassment to the conservative South Korean Government of President Lee Myung Bak, which does not want to be seen to reject an offer of détente, but which has always insisted that any face-to-face meeting must be preceded by progress on North Korean nuclear disarmament. The invitation appears to be part of an effort launch by the North over the summer to reach out to the international community after months of confrontation and provocation in the first few months of the year.

Western diplomats in Seoul understand that President Lee’s aides are “agonising” over the invitation, which they have publicly denied receiving. If they accept, they will be criticised by their supporters for compromising on a tough policy under which the South has cut off all aide to the North.

But a refusal at this stage could be seen as an irresponsible rejection of the hand of friendship at time of international efforts to bring North Korea back to nuclear negotiations.

The South Korean Government has reacted defensively to leaks suggesting that secret meetings have already been carried out by Mr Lee’s own brother to discuss the proposal. The US Government was forced to withdraw a statement by a Pentagon spokesman that Kim Jong Il had made an invitation, explaining that it was a “misunderstanding”.

“We have to take various things into consideration, such as progress on the South-North relations and the North Korean nuclear issue, before holding a summit with the North,” the South’s minister for unification, Hyun In Taek Hyun, said yesterday. “The most important thing is resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.”

Mr Kim had had summits with two of Mr Lee’s predecessors as South Korean President — Kim Dae Jung in 2000, followed two years ago by Roh Moo Hyun in 2007. Both were liberal politicians who pursued a “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with the North; both were criticised for giving Pyongyang the rewards of status and recognition, but failing to achieve any significant breakthrough in the military confrontation between the two sides which has lasted since the 1950-53 Korean War.

Kim Dae Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for his meeting with Kim Jong Il, but it was later revealed that his Government had paid several hundred million dollars in return for the meeting. Ironically, the latest proposal seems to have come out of a visit by senior North Korean officials to offer condolences after Kim Dae Jung’s death in August.

The leader of that delegation, Kim Yang Gon, a senior figure in the North Korean leadership, was spotted returning to Pyongyang at Beijing’s airport after what South Korean television said was a secret visit to meet emissaries of President Lee.

According to one report, vigorously denied by all concerned, one of them was the Lee Sang Deuk, a South Korean MP and President Lee’s older brother. Various accounts placed their meeting in Beijing, Singapore or Jakarta.

In the spring, North Korea appeared to set on a path of deliberate confrontation, after firing a ballistic rocket, testing a nuclear device and firing repeated volleys of short range missiles. But, since the summer, it has made a series of conciliatory gestures after visits by foreign dignitaries.

The former US president Bill Clinton returned home with two American journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years in jail for illegally entering the country. This month Kim Jong Il told the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, that he was willing in principal to return to nuclear negotiations.

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