By Choe Sang-Hun. Nov. 13, 2022 Kim Jong-un has launched a record number of missiles this year, hoping to leverage the tension between the United States and China, and to exploit hostilities toward Moscow.
A photograph provided by North Korean state media showed Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, speaking last month at the Central Academy of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang.Credit...Korean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
SEOUL — Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on. China has doubled down on its promise to take Taiwan. In the United States, clashes between Democrats and Republicans have hardened political divisions. With the Biden administration occupied on multiple fronts, North Korea, a tiny, isolated nation of 25 million people, has seemed determined to make Washington pay attention, its leader, Kim Jong-un, warning that the United States should no longer consider itself a “unipolar” superpower in a new “cold war.”
Mr. Kim has spent much of the year antagonizing the United States and its allies, testing a record number of missiles — 86 — and even rehearsing to fire a nuclear missile at South Korea. In a single day this month, North Korea fired 23 missiles, one of which crashed into waters only 35 miles off South Korea’s east coast, prompting islanders to seek shelter underground. It has flown Soviet-era war planes and launched hundreds of artillery shells near the border with the South in recent weeks, in addition to firing an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan.
With Russia hinting at threats to use nuclear weapons and relations between Washington and Beijing worsening, Mr. Kim most likely senses opportunity: In an increasingly destabilized world, there is no better time to test his weapons, show off his advancing technology and provoke his enemies with virtual impunity while trying to gain diplomatic leverage.
