I don’t think Kim is concerned at all about being next. If anything he is pointing out to everyone that he was correct to advance their nuclear and missile programs. Additionally he still has a positive relationship with Trump which is important:

North Korea’s sharply worded condemnation of recent US strikes on Iran has fueled debate over whether its leader Kim Jong-un feels unsettled by the dramatic downfalls of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And experts said the lesson for Kim may be less about fear than survival. Rather than pushing him toward talks with Washington, such events could reinforce his belief that only a credible nuclear deterrent guarantees regime security — a strategic difference that may embolden, rather than frighten, Pyongyang as it watches both the military action and its political aftermath, they pointed out. (………)

The removal of Maduro in January and the subsequent US-backed operation that eliminated Khamenei marked a rare sequence of regime-toppling actions against leaders openly hostile to Washington. Some experts say the developments inevitably resonate in Pyongyang and that the back-to-back removals of anti-US leaders complicate Kim’s calculus, particularly regarding whether to accept a potential summit.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Fortunately these South Korean citizens were able to evacuate from Iran:

Twenty-three South Koreans have been evacuated from Iran by land amid the escalating conflict following U.S. and Israeli military strikes, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

The individuals left Tehran early Monday (local time) aboard two chartered buses arranged by the South Korean Embassy in Iran and safely crossed the eastern land border into Turkmenistan on Tuesday, the ministry said.

All have passed through border checkpoints and are now on their way to Ashgabat. They are expected to return home or depart for a third destination Wednesday.

The evacuation came after the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran are escalating into a wider regional conflict, with neighboring countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon joining the fray alongside their respective allies.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Fortunately they caught her before anyone else was killed:

A criminal behavior expert says the first attack in the Gangbuk District serial murder case appears to have functioned as a test of sedatives before later killings, pointing to a pattern of escalation rather than isolated acts.

The suspect, a woman in her 20s identified by authorities as X, is accused of poisoning three men with drug-laced drinks, leaving two dead and one injured. She was handed over to prosecutors on Feb. 19 on charges including murder, causing injury and violating narcotics control laws.

Oh Yun-seong, a professor of police administration at Soonchunhyang University, said in a radio interview Tuesday that the first incident involving the suspect’s boyfriend appears to have been an experiment to confirm the effects of benzodiazepine-based sleeping pills prescribed by a psychiatric clinic.

“It was essentially testing the method,” he said, explaining that the suspect appeared to have observed that the drugged victim was unable to move for about four hours before moving on to more serious crimes.

The boyfriend lost consciousness after drinking the beverage but later recovered after being taken to a hospital. Police identified two additional attacks using a similar method that left two dead.

Oh said the suspect targeted men lured by her messages, making them particularly vulnerable. Regarding the third attack, carried out while she was already under police suspicion, he said the possibility that she acted while fully aware she had been identified as a suspect cannot be ruled out.

On the question of motive, he described the crimes as an extreme manifestation of a desire to manipulate and control interpersonal relationships. Citing accounts from X’s acquaintances that she left middle school, was later expelled from high school and had a history of theft and stoking tensions among acquaintances, the possibility of an impulse disorder should also be considered.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see if the Iran War has any impact on Lee’s approval rating if oil prices rise sharply enough to where it impacts the Korean economy:

President Lee Jae Myung’s approval rating fell slightly from a week earlier last week, marking its first decline in six weeks, a survey showed Monday.

Lee’s approval rating stood at 57.1 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous week, according to the survey by Realmeter, commissioned by a local business news outlet. Of those surveyed, 38.2 percent said they did not approve of Lee, up 1 percentage point over the cited period.

Realmeter partly attributed the drop in approval rating, which came despite positive financial and economic indicators, to recent social debates over the fairness of the government’s push to merge major cities and provinces and lowering the age for criminal punishment.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is an interesting Op-Ed in the Korea Times from a retired ROK Army general on what South Korea should learn from the Iran War:

(……..) There are clear parallels between Iran and North Korea. Both rely on missiles, coercive rhetoric and calibrated escalation to compensate for economic and conventional weakness. Both view nuclear capability as regime insurance. Both assume that external actors will ultimately avoid confrontation due to escalation risks.

The difference is that North Korea already possesses nuclear weapons. That reality does not guarantee safety. It merely raises the stakes.

The true stabilizing factor on the Korean Peninsula is not North Korea’s arsenal. It is the alliance structure anchored by South Korea, Japan and the United States. That structure imposes strategic restraint on all sides because any conflict would be immediate, catastrophic and alliance-driven.

But restraint depends on credibility.

Here is the uncomfortable point the Korean public must confront: the U.S.-ROK alliance is not indestructible. It is sustained by political will on both sides. If South Korea signals that the alliance is conditional, negotiable or politically expendable, Washington will not ignore that signal.

Great powers adjust. They always do.

Some in South Korea believe the alliance can be strategically “tested” — that Seoul can publicly distance itself from Washington, question joint exercises, dilute trilateral cooperation with Japan and still assume the American security guarantee remains unchanged. That is a dangerous illusion. (………)

If Washington perceives hesitation in Seoul, it will hedge. Hedging does not require abandonment. It requires adjustment — force posture changes, prioritization shifts, conditional commitments. And once strategic recalibration begins, it is rarely reversed quickly.

The first costs of miscalculation will not fall on Washington. They will fall on Seoul.

Progressives who advocate engagement with North Korea are not wrong to seek reduced tension. Dialogue is necessary. But dialogue that undermines deterrence credibility invites coercion. There is no historical example in which weakening alliance solidarity strengthened negotiating leverage with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Strategic autonomy is often invoked as justification for recalibrating ties with the United States. But autonomy without substitute capability is exposure. China will not defend South Korea against Northern aggression. Japan cannot replace American extended deterrence. An independent nuclear option would impose severe economic and diplomatic penalties on South Korea. (………)

Testing the alliance for domestic political leverage is not strategic sophistication. It is strategic gambling in an increasingly unforgiving environment.

Korea Times

You can read the whole thing at the link.

Besides making money from sending their Soldiers to fight for Russia, selling them weapons has been quite lucrative for the regime as well:

North Korea is believed to have shipped some 33,000 containers of military supplies, including weapons and ammunition, to Russia as part of its support for Moscow in the war with Ukraine, a military intelligence unit said Sunday.

The shipped volume, in terms of ammunition, could amount to over 15 million 152-mm artillery shells, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the defense ministry said in a report submitted to Rep. Kang Dae-sik of the main opposition People Power Party.

The assessment marks an increase from the DIA’s announcement in July last year that about 28,000 containers of military supplies had been shipped from North Korea to Russia.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.