THE leaders of North and South Korea will have plenty to talk about when they meet.

The summit talks between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in are seen as a breakthrough after Pyongyang’s nuclear tests raised tensions on the peninsula.

The summit is also seen as an icebreaker for an eventual meeting between Kim and Donald Trump, which has been pencilled in for May or June.

The Cold War stand-off between the two Koreas has lasted since the ceasefire in 1953, but tomorrow's meeting will see both leaders speak face to face about the problems.

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF THE SUMMIT?
SOME sort of progress on nuclear weapons, even it falls short of a breakthrough, headlines the list, but there is also, from the North Korean perspective, the problem of nearly 30,000 heavily armed US troops stationed in the South, and the failure to agree on a peace treaty formally ending the war.

The North says that creates the hostility that makes its own nuclear weapons necessary.

HOW HAS DIPLOMACY NOW TAKEN CENTRE STAGE AFTER?
MOON, a liberal who cut his political teeth as a lead architect of a previous government’s “sunshine policy” of engagement with North Korea, came into office last year hoping for better ties with the North.

Instead, one of the most heated North Korean weapons-testing outbursts in recent memory forced him to follow Washington in ramping up pressure on the North. Kim then began a charm offensive by declaring that North Korea had “achieved the goal of completing our state nuclear force”.

Analysts believe that North Korean technicians still have some work to do to make this a fact, but the important thing, from Moon’s viewpoint, was the shift to engagement.

HOW DID THIS ENGAGEMENT GET UNDER WAY?
THE Olympic Games in the South Korean mountain resort of Pyeongchang in February provided the perfect backdrop for that diplomacy to flourish.

Kim sent his sister to Pyeongchang with a summit invitation for Moon, and the two Koreas marched together at the opening ceremony and formed a single women’s ice hockey team.

During a visit by a high-level South Korean official to North Korea, Kim reportedly announced that he would not need nuclear weapons if his government’s security could be guaranteed.

He also reportedly offered to meet with Trump and stop weapons testing as the diplomacy plays out. After learning from South Korea of Kim’s offer to meet, Trump shocked the world by accepting.

COULD THEY REACH AN AGREEMENT?
IT is very unlikely that Kim is ready to give up his nuclear weapons, the benchmark for any real breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim has portrayed his nation as finally being able, after years of suffering, to meet the United States as a nuclear equal. But there are other measurements of success, and proponents of engagement say you’ll never know what is possible until you sit down and talk.

One possible “get” could be if North Korea offers to freeze its weapons as a first step toward denuclearisation, according to Robert Manning, a former US State Department official, and James Przystup, with the US National Defence University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies.

But, they wrote, Seoul and Washington must make clear that any freeze needs to come with unfettered UN inspections and visible dismantling of the North’s nuclear infrastructure.