The North Korean nuclear and missile threat has been rapidly increasing especially since 2017. During this past year, US intelligence agencies released two major new assessments of North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability that are different from the past ones. The first assessment reduced the time in which North Korea is expected to achieve the ability to attack the US mainland from three or four years to within a year.¹ At the end of 2017, another report claimed that the rogue regime will achieve nuclear-tipped ICBMs within only three months.² This rapid increase in threat poses a critical challenge to the ROK-US alliance, which has been the key factor in successfully deterring another war on the peninsula since the Korean War.

Read full article at www.theasanforum.org.