Leave it to the North Koreans to come up with propaganda balloons this crude:

North Korea has been floating balloons over the border with a cargo of propaganda leaflets denouncing the United States as well as South Korean leader Park Geun-hye, calling her “political filth.”

Recently, the leaflets have been accompanied by genuine filth: cigarette butts and used toilet paper.

According to military and police sources Monday, Pyongyang began sending the balloons carrying leaflets starting from Jan. 12 to retaliate for South Korea’s resumption of propaganda broadcasts at the border earlier that week.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

Until the Chinese government changes its mind that a nuclear North Korea is a less a threat than a destabilized North Korea they are going to continue to stop harsh sanctions against the Kim regime.  This ultimately only encourages the Kim regime to advance their nuclear and missile programs and commit further provocations:

Apart from the more hard-line thinkers in Washington, virtually no one wants to have to deal with what might happen if concerted international action were to actually destabilize Kim Jong Un’s regime, however strongly they may feel about its human rights record, authoritarian government and militantly defiant attitude toward Washington, Tokyo, Seoul and anyone else it sees as a threat.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ran into that wall this week during talks in Beijing with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. After meeting for more than four hours Wednesday, Kerry expressed his frustration with what the United States sees as China’s failure to do more to rein in Pyongyang, noting that “more significant and impactful sanctions were put in place against Iran, which did not have a nuclear weapon than against North Korea, which does.”

“All nations, particularly those who seek a global leadership role, or have a global leadership role, have a responsibility to deal with this threat,” Kerry said.

In response, Wang said China, which is North Korea’s most important ally, chief trading partner and a key source of economic assistance, agreed on the need for a new U.N. resolution. But he suggested Beijing would not support new penalties even though it condemned the Jan. 6 test.

“Sanctions are not an end in themselves,” Wang said bluntly. “The new resolution should not provoke new tension in the situation, still less destabilize the Korean Peninsula.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/693434661138206720

A threat memo found at Incheon International Airport, released by the police on Jan. 31, 2016, says in Arabic, “This is the last warning to you. God will punish.” The memo was found on Jan. 29 at the airport, the country’s main gateway, west of Seoul, inside a box that initially was suspected of carrying explosives. It was later found to hold two butane canisters taped to a water bottle. The memo was printed and had grammatical errors, according to the police. (Photo provided by the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency) (Yonhap)

Is Putin borrowing a tactic from the comfort women protesters in South Korea to stick it the US?:

Last week it was made known that the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation—a Russian analogue to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight, which has consultative powers—is planning to put forward a proposal for the installation of a memorial by the site of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, dedicated to the “genocide of the American Indians,” according to the RIA News Agency.

The request for permission to install such a monument was sent to the Administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation and to the Moscow city authorities.

“The initiative to install the monument [near the US Embassy] is very timely as an act that will remind [people today] from where the history of the USA started,” stated member of the Civic Chamber Valery Korovin, who supported the proposal. “This monument must become the silent reproach to the modern American elites which had significantly deviated from the idealistic principles that were laid into the foundation of the American state.”

According to Mr. Korovin, the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation should also appeal to the U.S. Congress to consider the “rehabilitation” of American Indians “as the native people of the United States, to admit the fact of their genocide by the US Government, to carry out the act of national repentance and thus to close this dark chapter of the U.S. history.”  [The Observer]

You can read more at the link.

Even if the US helped broker a deal between South Korea and Japan, so what?  It is in the US’s as well as Japan’s and the ROK’s national interests to work together when threats like the one posed by the Kim regime a real issue today:

North Korea claimed Monday that the United States pulled strings on a controversial deal between South Korea and Japan over Tokyo’s wartime sex slaves in a bid to strengthen its alliance with the two countries.

In December, Seoul and Tokyo reached a landmark deal to resolve the issue of Japan’s coercion of Korean women into sexual slavery during World War II. But some of surviving South Korean victims accused their government of failing to obtain Japan’s acknowledgment of legal responsibility and rashly reaching the deal without consulting them.

“The U.S. placated South Korea and Japan and forced them to sit in front of a negotiating table over the issue,” the Korean Central News Agency said. “The agreement was reached, masterminded by the White House which is seeking to use the two allies as storm troops for its control over Asia.”

The North’s claim came as the United Nations Security Council is working on a fresh resolution for stronger sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear test on Jan. 6.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

That is what the National Interest answers for its readers:

But as with almost all North Korean developments and proclamations from the exalted “supreme leader” Kim Jong-un, it’s hard to say what’s real and what’s a delusional fantasy. Nonetheless, Washington has to take the possibility of a nuclear-tipped North Korean ICBM seriously. What, then, can the United States do to stop a North Korean ICBM that’s headed towards the American homeland?

To a large extent the United States has prepared from this eventuality. The best way to stop a North Korean ICBM would be to eliminate the target before it’s launched. But if the regime in Pyongyang—in a move that would guarantee a devastating U.S. nuclear retaliation—manages to launch a missile towards an American city, Washington has an operational missile defense system in place.

The Missile Defense Agency’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) element provides Washington the ability to destroy a limited number of incoming intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles threats in space to defend the United States. There are interceptors already in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Right now there are a total of thirty interceptors deployed, but there are plans to add fourteen more missiles.   [National Interest]

You can read more at the link about other missile defenses the US has, but first of all launching an ICBM at the US would be a weapon of last resort since the US response would be so devastating against the North Koreans.  Additionally the rocket they are threatening to fire now would be easy to destroy left of launch since it takes days to prepare it for launch.  That is why the North Koreans have fielded the KN-08 ICBM that is road mobile and much more easier to launch.  However, it has never been tested and many have claimed they are mock ups.

For all we know the Kim regime could be playing the same games that Saddam Hussein did with exaggerating his military capability.  However, military leaders have to prepare for the worst case a threat poses and thus why the Kim regime’s threats are taken so seriously.

WSJ's story: "Behind the scenes it looks like Thaad is close to a done deal."@AlastairGale https://t.co/i4JQCz9OOn pic.twitter.com/GFY9GIWIDO

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) January 30, 2016

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) is featured being heartily greeted by women workers of the Kim Jong Suk Pyongyang Textile Mill that he visited in this photo carried by the country’s official media, the Korean Central News Agency, on Jan. 28, 2016. The news report said Kim expressed deep satisfaction “picturing to himself students going to and from school with cheerful laughter, carrying with them locally produced fashionable bags” manufactured at the facility. (Yonhap)

The data inconclusive, but I would not be surprised if the North Koreans did in fact test some hydrogen bomb components: