Analysis: Pyongyang may now focus on economy

SEoUL: In the dead of night, North Korea test-launches its most powerful missile yet. Six minutes later, rival South Korea unleashes a barrage meant to show it will hit back – hard – if war ever comes.

The nightmare scenario, made reality again yesterday, is terrifying and increasingly routine.

Yet there are signs that it might also signal something surprising: a calculated bit of restraint as Pyongyang nears a unique potential declaration, possibly in leader Kim Jong Un’s annual New Year’s Day speech.

The North, some speculate, may announce that since it now considers itself a nuclear power equal to the United States, it can put more effort into Kim’s other priority of trying to fix one of the world’s worst economies.

In short, could the end be near for North Korea’s years of headlong, provocative nuclear development?

Yesterday’s test of what the North called a new ICBM capable of hitting the entire US mainland was, like all the others, calibrated to both convey defiance and boast of a dramatically improving military capa- bility to Washington.

But Pyongyang also did very specific things that kept the launch well back of the point of shoving US President Donald Trump toward any military attack:

> It did not shoot its missile over Japan, which it has done twice in recent months.

> It did not fire its missile, as it previously suggested it might, into the waters around the US military hub of Guam in the Pacific.

> It did not conduct potentially the most worrying next step short of war: an atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon flying onboard a long-range missile over the Pacific.

Small victories, maybe. Certainly no guarantee of what the future holds for a country that prides itself on keeping outsiders guessing and on pushing its weapons development to the brink.

But the glimmer of restraint suggests the North may see itself nearing the point where it can claim military victory, however far that might be from the truth, and turn more toward other matters by next year, the 70th anniversary of the country’s founding.