The little guy in North Korea must feel a bit lonely off the front pages.  It's tough to be Kim and watch all of the newscasts about Putin, Xi, and Khamenei.  So Kim decided to get our attention and he fired a missile:

The Japanese and South Korean militaries said the January missile was launched on a high trajectory, apparently to avoid the territorial spaces of neighbors, reached a maximum altitude of 1,242 miles and traveled 497 miles before landing in the sea.

The flight details suggested North Korea tested its longest-range ballistic missile since 2017, when it flew ICBMs that demonstrated the potential to reach the U.S.

Image: Kim Jong-un (edited).  YouTube screen grab.

And it gets more interesting, according to the article:

The intelligence community also warned that North Korea's "chemical and biological weapons (CBW) capabilities remain a threat" and said U.S. intelligence officials are "concerned that Pyongyang may use such weapons during a conflict or in an unconventional or clandestine attack."

The intelligence community found that Kim "views nuclear weapons and ICBMs as the ultimate guarantor of his totalitarian and autocratic rule of North Korea and believes that, over time, he will gain international acceptance as a nuclear power."

"He probably does not view the current level of pressure on his regime, the economic hardships resulting from sanctions and his domestic COVID-19 countermeasures as enough to require a fundamental change in approach," the intelligence community warned, adding that Kim "aims to achieve prestige as a nuclear power as well as strategic dominance over South Korea."

Achieve prestige?  I guess so.  Kim's people are starving and living in an earthly hell.  Kim's nation is nothing but a nuclear kingdom for a little guy with a big ego who loves to be the "breaking news" segment on cable news.  It would be nicer if he'd look south and see how prosperous and happy the other Koreans on the peninsula are.  They are fit and nourished on the southern side of the border and literally starving on the northern side.

What can we do?  Not much.  Just be grateful that Saddam Hussein never got one of those weapons and made himself relevant as Kim does.  We took Saddam out, and I'm really grateful every time I see that the little guy in North Korea make the news by reminding us that he goes nuclear.

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