How North Korea went from the brink of nuclear war to a historic peace deal with the South in just five months

In 2017, the despot's rogue state test fired more than 20 missiles, threatened to wipe Seoul off the face of the earth and bragged it had developed nukes capable of taking out Washington DC and New York.

On top of that, despotic Kim fired missiles towards Japan, brutally executed dozens deemed to have wronged him and was even linked to the assassination of his own brother-in-law.

Then in August, the war of words with the US reached breaking point over North Korea's threat to fire ballistic missiles towards the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Amid the rising tensions, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock  - a symbolic assessment of how close the world stands to total destruction - to  just two minutes to midnight.

The world was  officially  “as dangerous as it had been since World War Two".

What followed was months of sabre rattling in Pyongyang and Washington - with things soon getting very personal between Kim and President Donald Trump.

Trump fired the opening shot in August when he said any attack on US targets would be met with "fire and fury".

The next month the President famously dubbed his North Korean counterpart 'Rocket Man.'

He said: "The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

Kim promptly hit back by calling Trump a "mentally deranged US dotard" - an insult which had diplomats diving into their dictionaries.

Trump responded by brandishing Kim "a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people".

In the following months both rivals warned each other that a nuclear onslaught was just the press of a button away.

By the time 2017 ended, global commentators were eerily predicting a nuclear apocalypse which would leave tens of millions dead.

The winds shifted in 2018 beginning with Kim's New Year speech, in which he wished his southern neighbours good luck in hosting the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Trump jumped on the thawing relationship to declare given the chance he could ";probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un".

By February the White House was admitting it was ready to hold talks with the North Koreans "under the right conditions".

Those conditions - as they had been all along  -  were that Kim must agree to ditch his controversial nuclear missiles programme.

Although Kim made no announcement on his military ambitions, observers did notice a softening in his stance and image.

The North Korean leader - once vilified by the West - had started to play nice.

After thawing relations with Seoul during the winter Olympics, he then kowtowed to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The North Korean state media also started toning down their traditionally hostile rhetoric, and presenting their leader as a warmer man, with a cleaner image.

In an attempt to show the North's sincerity ahead of the proposed peace talks, nuclear missiles virtually disappeared from the country's TV screens.

It was then revealed Trump had sent CIA Director Mike Pompeo to hold secret talks with Kim.

Pompeo flew to Pyongyang at Easter ahead of his upcoming trip to North Korea to discuss denuclearisation.

His trip came two weeks before Kim made a history on Friday after crossing the border into South Korea for the first time.

He became the first North Korean leader to enter the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953.