WITH ties to all sides involved, an Alloa reverend offered a unique insight into the historic Trump-Kim Summit.

The Rev Sang Y Cha, minister at St Mungo’s Parish Church, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary, spoke to the Advertiser after the US and North Korea this week opened the door to ending decades of conflict and division on the peninsula.

In 1950, Rev Cha's mother and grandmother fled North Korea and he himself was born in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

He was brought up in the country until the age of eight, when his family moved to the USA where he later became a Holywood agent before joining the clergy and subsequently arriving in the Wee County.

The 41-year-old explained how this tiny peninsula became a buffer zone of geopolitical significance in what he described as a “chess match” between the world’s superpowers.

And while there is now a glimmer of hope that the two sides could some day be unified again, the reverend remains cautious considering how authoritarian the North Korean regime has been with its executions and state control.

He said: “When you engage in that sort of public brutality, it is very hard to be convinced that you would be willing to cede power so easily.

“You would not only put yourself in danger, but those who are allies to you. And so that stark reality has to be addressed.”

He went on to explain that big changes around the world, like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the Arab Spring more recently, “came from within” society.

The reverend added: “I think that although diplomacy from the outside serves as a catalyst, it will not be the driving and the sustaining force for change, unless it comes from within.

“People say the devil is in the details and it’s true in this case.”

The minister said, at least in some ways, Korea is very similar to Scotland, both having been invaded over the centuries.

He explained: “They withstood it. This is a small nation, resilient people, just like the Scots.

“Deeply feeling, compassionate and just good people.”

For Koreans like his mother, now aged 70, unification could be “a miracle” as they still have family ties in the area.

Rev Cha said: “You have all these family members, blood relations, who have been scattered throughout the region, precisely because of this terrible war – it’s unfortunate.

“Will it happen in my lifetime? I’m 41, I’ve lived something like half of my life if I am lucky.

“Only god knows and I don’t mean that very gullibly – only god knows.”

While there has been criticism over the lack of detail, an agreement between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un saw the US agree to halting military exercises with its ally in the south, while the north, in principle, agreed to de-nuclearisation.