China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner by far, giving the former a great deal of leverage over the behavior of its neighbor.
The US and its allies currently deploy several ballistic missile defence systems that would be used in the event North Korea actually launched an attack.
Reuters/KCNA
Intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as the one tested by North Korea this week, fly far too high and fast for current missile defence systems to engage with.
A North Korean government picture claiming to show the country’s first successful ICBM test.
EPA/KCNA Handout
The key question is whether North Korea does have nuclear weapons that it can readily use against the United States and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan.
The demilitarised zone between North and South Korea is one of the last bastions of the Cold War.
Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
Any intensification of the military tension between North Korea and the United States would be calamitous, and requires a patient, innovative and informed approach by policymakers.
The over-riding priority underpinning North Korean foreign policy is regime survival and the perpetuation of the Kim family dynasty.
Reuters/KCNA
Regardless of how the US sending an aircraft carrier group to the Korean Peninsula plays out, the international community will ultimately have to accept and learn to manage a nuclear North Korea.
Beyond her own personal humiliation, the ramifications of Park’s fall are already reverberating from domestic South Korean politics into the fraught geopolitics of Northeast Asia.
A North Korean ballistic rocket launching drill, undated photo.
REUTERS/ North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
Tensions in Asia may soon boil over. If U.S. leaders fail to seek pathways to peace, the consequences may be grim, warns former National Security Council member.
Members of the youth wing of the National Front, Malaysia’s ruling coalition, hold placards during a protest at the North Korea embassy following the murder of Kim Jong-nam in Kuala Lumpur.
Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
North Korea remains committed to perfecting a deployable nuclear weapon capability. It is confident in the understanding that there appears little the international community can do to prevent it.
South Koreans were shaken by news of the North’s underground test.
EPA