SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — To his supporters, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is a master negotiator who's fixing decades of bad nuclear diplomacy with North Korea. To his critics, he's falling prey to the same old trap that has claimed previous South Korean presidents — but with an important difference: this time the stakes are much higher.

Whoever's right, it's hard to ignore Moon's role as the architect behind a new push to settle the nuclear standoff with the North.

The outcome of his efforts may hinge on a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, who spent months contemplating military strikes against the North before Moon steered him to the table, fulfilling his promise to push South Korea into the driver's seat in diplomacy with the North.