 I think the North Koreans are trying to achieve some of the similar outcomes that many other countries try and achieve with their foreign policy. So that would be recognition in the international community. There may be some goals related to domestic stability, domestic prestige. And also there may be a sense of genuine threat amongst the North Korean regime, which means or which is pushing them towards the development and the continuation of this nuclear program. Trying to understand which of these elements is the most important to the regime is a very difficult task. So in some ways I think it's more important to perhaps focus on how we react to what is happening in North Korea than trying to second guess why some of the North Korean leaders are taking this particular or these stances. He is a new leader himself. He faces a new leader in South Korea. And he's faced a new round of sanctions and pressure as a result of his air and missile tests. I think what he's been trying to do is to demonstrate particularly to his counterpart in South Korea, President Park. The limits of America's capacity to support South Korea. Now the last time there was a sort of a cycle of escalating threats and aggravation between the North and the South back in 2010, 2011. The United States made great play of promising South Korea that if North Korea behaved like this again, they would have it. Unambiguous, rock solid American support, including strong immigration, military support. So essentially what the North Koreans are doing at the moment is rattling the saber, ratcheting up attention and saying so to speak to America. So what are you going to do about this? How are you going to respond to this? And what the answer is, the answer is the United States has got nothing it can do. Of course the United States is immensely powerful, but it does not have the capacity to respond to North Korea's attacks in time without imposing higher costs on itself than it imposes on North Korea. It does not have in old fashioned nuclear strategic terms, it does not have what you should call an escalation control. So it can. What it's been trying to do over the last few weeks is as North Korea ups the tension, they've been upping the tension. So North Korea rattles a cage and Americans stand a couple of these two bombers, deploys more ships, conduct more exercises. But over the last week or so it's become a part of the United States has started to step back from that because they started getting worried that the North Koreans were going to go further than they wanted to go. So the North Koreans have succeeded in demonstrating to America that more important North Korea is going to be to solve the South Korea that the United States can't protect them. From North Korean aggravation unless and until it gets to say you're full scale war. Now I don't I don't think for a moment that North Korea has has intended to launch any substantial attack that might launch a sort of a provocation. But no substantial attack. I don't think there's any reason to fear that North Korea is dumb enough to actually start a war. What it does want to do is to demonstrate that its position is stronger than people in the South or people in Washington might think. I think it actually demonstrated that quite successful. If the crisis calls off from now, they will have had a win. Obviously this isn't anything new. It's been a pattern that's gone on for a very long time and particularly under Kim Jong-un's father Kim Jong-il. The world repeated phases when North Korea moved into kind of Bellyto's mode, particularly following John Hexer sciences between the United States and South Korea. But this time it does seem to be a bit different. It seems to have gone on rather longer and become more and more extreme. I can't. I think nobody can make any kind of definite statement about that. But there are various interesting possibilities that we can think about. One of the things that struck me as being interesting is the fact that in the middle of all this warlike talk and so on, the North Korean government promoted Pavongju, who is known as an economic reformer and was one of the people who tried to introduce economic reforms under Kim Jong-il. So that got me wondering whether Kim Jong-un has certainly tried to push economic reform from time to time. And clearly you must know that North Korea is in a terrible situation today. One possibility is that he would like on the one hand to try and push some kind of reform, but on the other hand, realises that in order to do that he's got to have the military on the side, he's got to get all the people working together, and he feels that he can do that by talking about the military, the external threats. So it could be a kind of, in a sense, part of a more balanced strategy. The only problem is that Kim Jong-un is so young and inexperienced, and to do something like that successfully, you really need to know what you're doing. And my sense is that he's started going down this war talk path with the idea that it's going to get him somewhere, but he hasn't thought of the way out. Kim Jong-un is a very ambitious man. He believes that he can do something that his father and grandfather couldn't do. So maybe we should list what were the failures of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's agenda. First, neither of his predecessors could achieve the diplomatic recognition of North Korea. North Korea was trying to sign a peace treaty with the United States since 1974. The United States is silent still about that. They failed to have the international sanctions removed, although Kim Jong-un managed to have North Korea removed from the list of terrorism-sponsored states. But still, plenty of sanctions, and more and more sanctions are coming after the nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. I'm talking about Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il could not convince the United States to give them a security assurance. Although under Kim Il-sung there were some attempts to freeze the nuclear programs and the framework agreement was signed in 1994, which worked for some time under Clinton administration. But still, the issue of continuing war and continuing sanctions and continuing threat of forced regime change in North Korea persists. Kim Jong-un is trying to address this issue. He feels like he wants to solve all the problems at once. But it looks like he doesn't see the core of the problem. And the core of the problem is that the regime cannot change. Change of North Korea is dissolved North Korea. Because such kind of regime can survive only in isolation and in perpetual crisis. And this is what Kim Jong-un is creating. Every launch, every nuclear test creates more isolation from North Korea. And also he creates a sense of threat from outside, explaining to his people that they are surrounded by the enemies. And that they have to consolidate around him, around Kim Jong-un, to feel safe. So whether people trust him or not, that's another issue. So time is passing by and more and more people realise that they are being cheated and deceived. 60 years of lies don't add any credit to Kim Jong-un and the whole Kim's family. People are getting tired of shortage of food, of shortage of electricity, of miserable life and constant threat from domestic secret police. So the situation in North Korea is pretty difficult. And so to keep people isolated, ignorant and desiled, Kim Jong-un must create continuing crisis. And that's what he's doing.