North Korea’s scary test launch of a newly developed, solid-fuel, nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile caused a brief panic on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido last week. It also added a note of urgency to today’s meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Japan’s hot-spring resort of Karuizawa, where the Pyongyang regime’s escalating threats will be high on the agenda. Even so, the key to the North Korea conundrum may lie hundreds of miles away, in Beijing.
Two questions will dominate G7 deliberations. Why is Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s dictator, deliberately ratcheting up tensions with South Korea, Japan and the US, their ultimate protector? And what can the allies do in response? Hailing the launch, the latest in more than 100 tests since last year, Kim gave an insight into his paranoid thinking. The new missile would “reinforce our nuclear counter-attack” and induce “the enemy to give up its idle strategy”, he said. Until then, he promised only “endless fear”.
