With just seven months left before he steps down as president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in and his government remain committed to their long-held dream of reuniting the two halves of the Korean Peninsula into a single nation.

And, with Germany as one of the very few countries with recent experience of a similar amalgamation of two states, Unification Minister Lee In-young is traveling to Europe to discuss what can be learned from the events leading up to German reunification in 1990 and subsequent developments.

Analysts suggest Moon and Lee have been "frustrated" by the failure to advance their agenda of bringing the two Koreas closer together over the last five years. But they point out that the reason for cross-border relations being at an impasse does not lie in the South.

Pyongyang's intransigence and refusal to even communicate with Seoul for much of the last year has effectively halted the already stunted bilateral relationship, while the North has in recent weeks made efforts at rapprochement even more complicated with a series of missile launches. North Korea on Friday confirmed that it had tested a new anti-aircraft missile the previous day, while on Tuesday it launched a weapon that the regime described as a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide missile.

The United States and Japan have both condemned the launches, with the firing of the hypersonic missile described as a "violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions."