From the handshake that touched many to their core, to seeing the leader of North Korea on live television for the first time, palling around with his South Korean counterpart -- the historic summit between the two in April produced surreal images.

When the North’s Kim Jong Un and South’s Moon Jae-in met, it marked the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953 that a leader of the North entered the South’s territory and the first inter-Korean summit in 11 years.

But for AFP journalists covering the summit -- Sebastien Berger, Sunghee Hwang, Park Chan-kyong and Yelim Lee -- the history and emotion were tempered by caution. The two Koreas had held two previous summits since the end of hostilities, in 2000 and 2007. Hopes were high after each, but they never materialized into a lasting accord.

The key to any agreement between the Koreas, our journalists agree, will be the summit between US President Donald Trump and Kim, due to take place in June.

"I was OK with the idea of getting 'board to death' in my new beach life in Miami, Florida, like most of my colleagues had advised me. After seven years of covering war, Islamist insurgencies and natural disasters, no more life-threatening adventures, they all told me," writes Gianrigo Marletta, a video journalist who has just arrived in Miami after seven years of being based in Indonesia.

"So how did it happen that barely month after my arrival, here I was again, chasing lava spewing out of yet another angry volcano?"