Moon, 65, began his single five-year term in May last year after winning a special by-election after the early ouster of his conservative predecessor, Park Geun-hye, who faced a huge political scandal.

Moon, a former human rights lawyer, previously worked as chief of staff for late liberal President Roh Moo-hyun, who held the Koreas’ second summit talks with Kim Jong-il in 2007. Moon oversaw Seoul’s preparations for the summit, which produced a slew of now-stalled reconciliation projects.

Before Moon’s inauguration, ties between the Koreas suffered as the North furiously reacted to Park’s hardline policy on its nuclear programme. The North’s state media called Park a ‘prostitute’ and ‘traitor’.

Moon initially found little room to mend ties with North Korea as Kim’s accelerated pace of weapons tests last year forced him to join US-led efforts to maximise sanctions and pressure on the North.

But things changed dramatically this year, with Kim sending athletes to the Winter Olympics in the South and Moon later brokering a meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump set for May or early June.

Moon is a son of North Korean refugees who fled to South Korea aboard a US ship after the 1950-53 Korean War broke out. His family resettled in South Korea’s southeastern region, and Moon once waited in line as a boy to receive handouts of corn flour and milk powder.

After entering Seoul’s Kyung Hee University in 1972, he became a pro-democracy student activist and was imprisoned for several months while fighting against the dictatorship of Park’s father, Park Chung-hee. In 1975, Moon was conscripted into the special forces because of his dissident activities.