While it would be absurdly presumptuous to expect an announcement that the two Koreas are about to sign a peace treaty or that Kim Jong-un will be decommissioning his nuclear arsenal any time soon, the world now has real reasons for hope.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
A global audience numbering in the hundreds of millions watched on Friday as the North Korean leader crossed the border into South Korea.
He was the first North Korean leader to cross the 38th parallel, the demarcation zone between the two countries and one of the globe's most notorious potential flash points, in 65 years.
It was here, at the Panmunjom Truce Village in July 1953, that an armistice was signed by military commanders representing the North Koreans, the Chinese and the United Nations forces who had come to the rescue of the beleaguered south.
The South Korean government was not represented at all. The North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, was not present.
The armistice was a purely military document that brought to an end just under three years of fighting that had claimed the lives of almost 4 million people. It had taken two years and 17 days, and 158 separate meetings, to negotiate.
Friday's talks, also held at the truce village, were very different in nature, scope and attendance to those of 6½ decades ago.
No representatives of foreign powers were in attendance and, after an extended round of formalities, the private talks began.
While there had been extensive preliminary negotiations, weighty questions about trade sanctions, economic assistance, the future of North Korea's nuclear arms and rocket programs and the eventual negotiation of a peace treaty can only be delegated so far.
While, unlike in 1953, neither China nor the US, or the United Nations for that matter, had a formal presence, the two superpowers, already at loggerheads over trade and China's expansion of its influence into Africa and the Pacific, would have been the biggest elephants in the room.
Both will be taking a close interest in the progress of the talks, which some commentators are saying only came about because of the hard line taken towards North Korea by Donald Trump following his inauguration last year.
"Decades of conventional diplomacy with North Korea only led to the Kim dynasty acquiring nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them between continents," Daniel McCarthy wrote in London's Daily Telegraph on Friday.
"To make peace demands a new approach, and President Trump has found one ... Trump is everything that Obama was not ... Trump has used tough language and the threat of violence to change the calculus of war and peace in Korea."
While it would be wrong to give President Trump all the credit for bringing the two leaders to the negotiating table, given North Korea has just managed to blow up its own nuclear testing facility and is desperate to see the trade sanctions eased, there is no doubt he has played an important role.
The real test of his diplomatic skills will be whether or not he can keep the process going when he meets with Kim Jong-un in the near future.
Twitter diplomacy can only take you so far.
