New York Times Opinion: Kim Jong-un Is Just Getting Started →

By Jean H. Lee

Ms. Lee made dozens of reporting trips to North Korea from 2008 to 2017. She is a co-host of the “Lazarus Heist” podcast from the BBC World Service and a senior fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington.

You could be forgiven for forgetting about North Korea, which went quiet for a stretch, locked in self-imposed isolation for two years during the pandemic while U.S. attention diverted to other crises (like the perilous fate of Ukraine).

Now there’s been a burst of ballistic missile tests in the new year: seven in January alone — an unprecedented pace for Pyongyang — and two in the past few weeks, prompting the U.N. Security Council to huddle for emergency meetings and drawing condemnation from some members.

If it seems as if North Korea wants us to sit up and pay attention — Don’t forget, we’re still building missiles and nuclear weapons! — that’s certainly one of its objectives.

But these tests are about a lot more. 

Read the full essay in the New York Times.