“There are times when nothing much can happen between the Koreas. This is not one of them.”

Quoting yourself is a bit narcissistic – not to say North Korean. Covering the DPRK means you get it wrong – we all do – a lot of the time. So forgive me if I flag up a happy exception.

I wrote those words four days ago, albeit without hope. This has been such a frustrating year in inter-Korean relations: an area which I have followed closely since the turn of the century, writing quarterly for Pacific Forum-CSIS’s online journal Comparative Connections.