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For days North Korean officials have raged over US-South Korean military drills, promising a violent response. That response came this week, when the North fired more than 20 missiles one of which splashed down near the South Korean sea border.
It was a significant escalation in a year that has already seen the most North Korean missile test launches ever, and it raises an important question: How much further will they go?
North Korea’s playbook has traditionally been to continually ratchet up provocations until it gets US attention and can then negotiate for sanctions relief or other concessions from what it sees as a position of power.
The bar for getting attention these days may be higher, with the United States focused on upcoming elections and Russia and the West consumed by the war in Ukraine. That could mean the North has to do more to get the reaction it wants but it also increases the possibility that Pyongyang could end up pushing South Korea too far. Already there is growing discussion in Seoul about creating an indigenous nuclear programme.
North Korea observers have long sketched out the various levels Pyongyang uses to express its anger. At the bottom of the list is fiery rhetoric in state-controlled media. That may then progress into shorter-range missile launches of the type seen Wednesday.
After that would come longer-range tests, including ICBMs designed to target the United States or intermediate missiles like the ones that the North has sent hurtling over the Japanese archipelago in the past, deep into the Pacific. At the top of the list is a test detonation of one of their nuclear devices.
Each new level cranks up already soaring tensions on the Korean Peninsula, where hundreds of thousands of troops from both sides and the United States square off along the world’s most heavily armed border.
