Kim Jong-un: The 'rational actor' who made history this year

Kim Jong-un made history this year by becoming the first North Korean leader to cross the DMZ to step into South Korea to meet President Moon Jae-In. The summit between the two countries in April was the first in over a decade.

The meet was aimed at ending their decades-long conflict and easing tensions over the North's nuclear weapons programme.

Moon greeted Kim at the military demarcation line, making Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The 35-year-old leader, later in June, held a historic and high-profile meeting with US President Donald Trump in Singapore where he committed to work towards denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

Washington and Pyongyang have subsequently sparred over what that means and how it will be achieved, with the Trump administration consistently referring to the denuclearisation of North Korea specifically.

The process had become deadlocked until Moon's trip to Pyongyang, where Kim agreed to permanently dismantle a missile testing site.

Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because the Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the Cold War conflict, which pitted the South, the United States and United Nations forces against the communist North, backed by China and Russia.

The emerging US consensus on Kim is similar to what many outside experts have publicly concluded. He is seen as a "rational actor", said US officials - not the "total nut job" that Trump once branded him. He craves international stature but his main aim is "regime survival" and perpetuating his family dynasty, suggesting it will be hard for him to agree to full nuclear disarmament, the officials said.

He is ruthless enough to have had relatives executed but now feels secure enough in power to gamble on Trump, they said. In terms of personality, he is seen more like his charismatic grandfather, Kim Il Sung, than his more camera-shy father.

His dispatch of his sister to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February and a rare appearance by his wife when South Korean envoys visited in March demonstrates an effort to humanise his leadership abroad, they added.