It is not the first time that North Korea has been in the news; the problem for the international community especially those nations in East Asia is that the Hermit Kingdom has been too often in the headlines in recent weeks. Chairman Kim Jong Un has literally put the world on notice that he means business when he mentioned recently that Pyongyang had gone through with a theatrical nuclear drill under his personal supervision.
Under normal circumstances South Korea, Japan and the United States may have taken it in stride but not under the current environment of apprehension on the possible use of nuclear weapons during the course of the Ukrainian war, of course by Russia.
Chairman Kim does not need any excuses but his current ruse is that Washington, Seoul and Tokyo are sending troubling signals—or even provoking-- by way of military exercises in the peninsula. What the North Korean dictator does not acknowledge is that these exercises may not have taken place if there had not been a barrage of missile firings and tests in the Peninsula and over the Sea of Japan leading to a real wartime drills in South Korea and Japan. All this is not to forget the constant reminder to Washington that North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles could reach mainland United States.
