THE BBC ASSESSES THE NORTH KOREAN CRISIS: “Unpredictability” is at play. Play? Hey Beeb, unpredictability has been a ploy.

North Korea has long been seen to use provocation and brinkmanship to raise tension for its own strategic advantage.

It is then able to win diplomatic and economic concessions through negotiations to defuse the crisis, only later to go on to renege on its disarmament commitments.

As the cycle begins again, at each stage, it moves a step closer to its goal of becoming a fully-fledged nuclear power.

But while the current state of technological advancement of North Korea’s weapons programme matters deeply to the outside world, in particular its near neighbours, the hostile rhetoric is rarely something to take at face value…

“If the US goes on with their reckless option of using military means then that would mean from that very day, an all out war,” Mr Han told me.

(His) interview does though give a hint of the new worrying unpredictability at play.

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The Kim regime’s

…message is clear.

Militarised and isolated, North Korea has the right to follow its own path and, Mr Han apparently believes, no one will be able to stop it.

So far, he has been proven right.

So far. But it appears South Korea, Japan and the US are tired of North Korea’s threat theater
and now see Pyongyang’s improving missile and nuclear weapons capabilities as a genuine threat.