Things are Getting Tense

[IUHoosiergirl88]

Honestly, I wouldn't be super concerned.

First, Un has little to no incentive to actually do anything threatening--and if he does, he should know by now that nobody has the patience to deal with him and will blow him and his country off the face of the planet before he can say 'nuclear'. China and Russia are their sole allies in the region (I don't count Iran...they're not regional); the PRC is at the end of their fuse with them and Russia doesn't want more instability. The DPRK tends to do this to get more money out of countries since they care more about building bombs than feeding their own people. Since the DPRK has shut down access to Kaesong, I'd say the odds of them doing something are slightly higher, but still not super likely

Second, militarily they are WAY behind. While the DPRK does have a sizable contingent of traditional medium range ballistic missiles, they don't have much in the way of long-range missiles that are reliable. None of their military technology has the range to reliably reach Hawaii, let alone the mainland US. They could do a quick strike into South Korea, but given the US's presence in the country + South Korea's military + the rest of the world's opinion, I don't think they'd last long.

Finally, don't underestimate China's role in all of this. China wants North Korea to remain weak for a few reasons--they're a buffer zone between the PRC and South Korea, and if the DPRK falls, hundreds of thousands of refugees will flood across the border into China, stressing government from the local on up. China also views the refugees as a national security threat, since they don't know who is just a refugee and who could be a spy.