Officials and experts have been predicting a North Korean nuclear test for a while now. Some analysts expected a North Korean test soon after North Korea’s Kim gave his annual New Year’s speech on January 1, 2019. Then COVID hit, and Pyongyang essentially shuttered its border with the outside world. Since then there has been speculation about an impending nuclear test. A wave of speculation about a North Korean test erupted in May and then again in October last year. At the time, Biden administration officials warned that a test could be coming, but it didn’t happen.
Did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine scramble Kim’s decision calculus? Have lingering fears of COVID deterred a country whose public health system seems chronically on the edge of collapse?
We don’t know. What is clear is that that nothing has happened in the last few years to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula. Whatever was pushing Kim to test before has not gone away. If anything, deteriorating relations with South Korea may have given Pyongyang additional incentive. As former Department of Defense official Frank Aum points out in the Film Room: Featured Shorts, continued stalemate is dangerous for everybody.
Meanwhile, the world sits and waits for a North Korean nuclear test.