North Korea thrust itself back into the international limelight with its recent hacking of Sony Pictures. As always, however, the gravest danger from North Korea is the threat that its unpredictable leaders could one day unleash a nuclear weapon, either in anger or by mistake.
With so many crises demanding the attention of President Obama and other world leaders, it is tempting, even convenient, to relegate North Korea to the back burner when it is not testing a nuclear device or a missile. Washington had done so before the Sony incident. The North has not conducted nuclear and missile tests in nearly two years, in large measure because China has been more aggressive in pressuring Pyongyang to behave by withholding vital supplies of jet fuel and heating oil.
China’s tactics have been a useful short-term check on the North, but they are not a durable answer to the nuclear threat, which continues to grow. North Korea poses a unique danger because it is actually trying to target the United States with nuclear weapons. Experts believe that Pyongyang probably had no nuclear weapons in January 2003 when it walked away from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Yet today the regime may have enough fissile material for as many as a dozen warheads, in addition to increasingly capable missiles with which to deliver them.
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