SOUTH Korean President Moon Jae-in meets with Kim Jong-un on Tuesday in a bid to turbo-charge flagging peace talks. After the cancellation of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's trip last month to Pyongyang, the key question for Mr Moon and Mr Kim is whether sustained moves towards "denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula will ultimately prove anything more than a mirage.

At the heart of the log-jam, right now, is not just the vagueness of the commitments in June's Singapore summit between Mr Kim and US President Donald Trump. There is also a fundamental difference between Pyongyang and Washington over what next steps are needed to build confidence.

While Mr Trump and much of the international community are expecting further concrete actions from Pyongyang, Mr Kim argues that the North has already taken the major step of dismantling a nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, where nuclear tests "have been made impossible for good". And the North is therefore now calling for reciprocation of goodwill measures, beyond the halting of joint Washington-Seoul military exercises, to "create situations (on the ground) in the peninsula where (Pyongyang) would feel the decision to denuclearise was a right move".