CNN reported Thursday morning that intercepted communications indicate that North Korea may be planning to launch ballistic missiles “within days,” in yet another potential escalation. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin also told a government panel on Thursday that North Korea has moved a medium-range missile to its eastern coast, possibly in preparation for either a test or military demonstration.

North Korea’s threat comes from three factors: the unpredictability of its leader, Kim Jong Un; its ongoing nuclear weapons program; and its large amount of conventional weapons. Despite the difficulty it has seen in testing and its lack of large stockpiles of fissile material, North Korea’s nuclear program remains a major concern. North Korea appears to have jump-started the process of getting its plutonium reactor at Yongbon back online, but it will possibly take years to produce enough material for new weapons. At present, North Korea is estimated to have enough plutonium for 10 nuclear warheads, but Pyongyang’s ability to shrink down a nuclear warhead to the size where it would fit on a missile has advanced significantly and the country theoretically maintains rudimentary delivery methods within the region. There is also concern that North Korea could sell its weapons and/or weapons technology to third parties.

Even in light of Pyongyang’s nuclear capacity, North Korea’s large array of missiles and rockets remain a considerable threat to the peace and stability of the region. Of those conventional weapons, North Korea’s short-range Scud and Rodong missiles pose the greatest risk to U.S. assets in the area, given their high number and accuracy. With an estimated 1,800-mile range, the Musudan medium-range missile — which is mostly likely the type moved to the North Korean cost on Thursday — also may pose a significant threat, but its effectiveness has been questioned given the missile’s lack of prominent testing.

North Korea’s longer range missiles — the Taepodong-2 and Uhna rocket — are less reliable, both in accuracy and in performance. In 2006, a test of the Taepodong-2 completely failed, as did its use in an attempt to place a satellite in orbit in 2009. In Dec. 2012, North Korea did successfully test the Unha rocket, claiming to use it to a satellite in orbit. Estimates of the range for the Unha places it at approximately 4,500 miles — able to reach the U.S. West Coast — although experts have said that it is highly unlikely that North Korean missiles can hit the U.S. mainland and the Unha’s accuracy is completely unknown.

In any case, it is more likely that the launch of North Korean missiles would be a threat to U.S. allies and assets in the region, including South Korea and Japan. South Korea is well-within range of the shortest range missiles, with Seoul being only 35 miles from the Demilitarized Zone. That short distance also lends itself to the possibility that North Korea could drop a nuclear bomb on the country, rather than launch a nuclear warhead. Japan, while not particularly caught in this current spiral, has also been on the receiving end of North Korea’s threats. The two countries are home to a combined 64,000 U.S. forces, stationed in bases at Okinawa, the DMZ, and other locations.
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North Korea has ratcheted up tensions on the Korean peninsula another notch, this time barring South Korean workers from accessing an industrial complex shared between the two countries.

Beginning on Wednesday, North Korea announced, the Kaesong industrial complex would no longer be allowing in workers from the South, nor shipments of goods, effectively shutting down the one remaining open entry point between the two countries. Seoul has indicated that its 850 citizens working at the complex’s factories at the time of the announcement will be allowed return, but few have done so yet:

The BBC’s Lucy Williamson, at the border, says many have decided not to return immediately because they fear they will not be allowed back in.

One South Korean worker who returned from the complex said some of his colleagues had been held up because they had no transport.

“Other people couldn’t return because they were supposed to be taken home on trucks scheduled to carry supplies into North Korea, but the trucks couldn’t get into the North,” said the worker.

South Korea has demanded that the access point be reopened immediately, and warned of retaliation in the event that South Koreans are harmed. More than 100 South Korean industries have production facilities at the Kaesong complex, which combined pay over $90 million in North Korean salaries every year.

Opened in 2004 as a gesture of goodwill between the states, the Kaesong complex is one of the few legal methods remaining for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — as the reclusive communist regime is formally known — to acquire hard currency. This isn’t the first time the complex has been closed; it was briefly shutdown in 2009, as a protest over joint United States-South Korea military exercise, but there’s no indication as to how long this closure may last. Meanwhile, the Demilitarized Zone — the 2.5 mile wide stretch of land between the two countries — is still being patrolled so far, ruling out any immediate threat of renewed fighting between the two countries.

The move from North Korea is the latest in a long string of moves that has observers of the situation on edge. While no new military movements have been detected on the part of North Korea, its rhetoric has made predicting the North’s next action difficult. On Tuesday, North Korea announced that it intended to restart its shuttered nuclear facilities, which are capable of producing plutonium and enriched uranium.

General U.S. James Thurman — commander of the U.S. forces in Korea and head of the United Nations Command there — spoke with ABC News about the continuing escalations on Tuesday in a rare interview. Asked whether he felt that North Korea’s rhetoric was just empty threats, Gen. Thurman replied, “No, I don’t think that they are. We’ve got to take every threat seriously.” In response to provocations from the North, the U.S. has positioned two warships capable of downing ballistic missiles off the Korean coast.

(Photo: Trucks re-enter South Korea from the North. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency)

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are nothing new — historically, North Korea frequently rattles its saber for one reason for another. But the recent escalation in tensions between the North and South have experts worried that this time might be different, that the threat of the United States being drawn into a devastating war with the nuclear-armed North is real in a way that it might not normally be. At the very least, it’s worth paying special attention this time around.

The escalation of tensions began in mid-February, when North Korea conducted its third-ever nuclear test. While the North’s ability to strike the United States is limited at best, the Obama administration interpreted the test as a violation of international law, and pushed through stricter, though still porous, sanctions on North Korean elites.

North Korea responded in turn by threatening to nullify the armistice that ended the original Korean War, reverting the North and South to a legal state of war. Two days ago, it shut off the last remaining line of communication between the two Korean militaries, warning that “Not words but only arms will work on the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces.”

Thursday night, the United States responded in kind, conducting a bombing drill with two B-2 bombers over South Korea. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel described the thinking behind the move: “The North Koreans have to understand that what they’re doing is very dangerous.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un got the message Friday morning. He ordered his country’s missile arsenal be readied to strike South Korea and the United States if necessary. While North Korean Unha-3 missiles could theoretically reach the West Coast, it’s not clear the missiles actually work. Moreover, North Korea lacks the technology to arm the missiles with nuclear warheads and to deliver them accurately even if they can get them in proper working order. (One expert has noted that “there is little to no chance that [North Korea] could successfully land a missile on Guam, Hawaii or anywhere else outside the Korean Peninsula that U.S. forces may be stationed.”)

So how is this different from the last 60-odd years of North Korean provocations? Many think it isn’t. Writing in the National Interest, Rajon Menon says the current Northern provocations are an example of the Hermit Kingdom’s “measured madness,” an attempt to wring more concessions out of an overcompensating international community.

But North Korea experts Victor Cha and David Kang disagree. They argue that Kim Jong Un’s inexperience (he’s only been running the country since December 2011), together with the South’s new President and more aggressive military stance, means there’s a greater risk (not certainty by any stretch, but risk) of escalation this time around:

So why worry? Two reasons. First, North Korea has a penchant for testing new South Korean presidents. A new one was just inaugurated in February, and since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace. Whether in the form of missile launches, submarine incursions, or naval clashes, these North Korean provocations were met by each newly elected South Korean president with patience rather than pique. The difference today is that South Korea is no longer turning the other cheek…for half a century, neither side believed that the benefits of starting a major war outweighed the costs. The worry is that the new North Korean leader might not hold to the same logic, given his youth and inexperience.

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