North Korea's neighbours have been holding private meetings and making public pleas for months, imploring the rogue state to return to multilateral talks about its nuclear weapons programme.

The growing sense of frustration, even desperation, among the US and South Korea in particular, over Pyongyang's continued truancy found relief at the weekend when North Korea set a date to resume the talks on July 25. But that was the easy part, analysts say; making progress at the fourth round of talks is likely to be more difficult.