In the 16 months Donald Trump has been in office as president of the United States, he has celebrated "progress" on the issue of North Korea and its nuclear weapons as one of his major successes.
His supporters have even called for him to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to engage the North Korean regime and its leader, Kim Jong-un.
At first, it seemed to be working. After starting his presidency exchanging insults with the secretive leader – with Trump dubbing Kim "little rocket man" and Kim branding Trump a "dotard" – denuclearisation talks seemed to be progressing, as Kim met with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and held an historic summit with South Korea's president Moon Jae-in.
The talks were followed by a shock announcement that North Korea had suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests ahead of a new round of negotiations with South Korea and the United States.
But now, Trump and the South Korean President have been holding urgent discussions to ensure the North Korea-US summit remains on track.
It is now looking unlikely to go ahead after North Korea said it would not hold talks with South Korea unless their demands that the South stops conducting military drills are met.
While the US President seems surprised by the U-turn, experts such as Brian Klaas of the London School of Economics are suggesting this was North Korea's plan all along.
"Trump's early victory lap on Twitter and the media hyperventilation over a possible Nobel Prize is like a cyclist who celebrates prematurely only to crash before the finish line," he told HuffPost UK.
"It was never credible to believe that insulting Kim Jong-un on Twitter was the solution to decades of a slow-burning and deeply complicated diplomatic impasse."
How Did We Get Here?
The relationship between the two countries got off to a bad start under Trump, who last year derided Kim Jong-Un as a "maniac," referred to him as "little rocket man" and threatened in a speech last year to "totally destroy" North Korea, a country of 26 million people, if it attacked the United States or one of its allies. Kim responded by calling Trump a "mentally deranged US dotard".