One of my first blog posts is about North Korea that is on the move, again.
That seems to be on the move again. This time they seem to show Japan some of their oh-so-shiny missiles.
In the last few days, some people at my local coffee place here in Córdoba asked me about the current situation between Russia and Ukraine. The Argentinian news channels don’t seem to cover that much about what’s happening in Europe.. or at least, they’re not so much diving deep into it.
So one of these guys at this coffee place asked me what I think about the current situation with North Korea and if they’re doing this on purpose since everyone is focusing on Russia and Ukraine.
North Korea’s Secrecy is Interesting
I’ve always found North Korea an interesting topic to talk about. I watched several documentaries about its regime and what the country offers regarding “tourism”. There is this great documentary with Michael Palin that I really recommend you to watch if you’re interested in North Korea.
With the current situation where North Korea suddenly seems to found a way to attract some attention in a not-so-good moment, they launched some missiles directly into the airspace of Japan. The Japanese didn’t quite appreciate that, nor did North Korea’s “BFF” The United States.
The US and Japan quickly gathered some of their power rockets and showed the North Koreans that they better keep a low profile with their missiles.
My friend at the coffee place asked me; Why is North Korea suddenly showing up again?
Personally, I think that the North Koreans suspect that this is the right moment to test some of their recent without that much backslash from the world because everyone seems to be focused on Russia and their next (nuclear?) steps.
Missiles in Japan’s Territory
But a missile in the airspace of Japan doesn’t quite pass unnoticed. Especially if it endangers Japan’s northeastern regions, which is why the Japanese government issued a so called “J-alert” to residents in these regions, the first such alert since 2017. Trains were temporarily suspended in Japan’s Hokkaido and Aomori regions before their operations were resumed after a government notice that the North Korean missile appeared to have landed in the Pacific.
My Take on it
Does the Kim regime see a free pass to launch more missiles? I don’t think so. The Kim regime knows very well that they do not stand a chance, but they do love to show off a bit, which is what they just did. They seem to enjoy putting some extra pressure on the current world situation. They truly caught some catchy headlines across the world’s most popular newspapers, so they succeeded in their regime-marketing campaign.. and they seem to have succeeded with their missile test as well.
Honestly, I think this is just the Kim regime putting extra pressure on the current global situation. I don’t see any further actions from the North Koreans that’ll cause more trouble. He got the headlines, he got the test results of his missiles, marketing campaign succeeded ✅
