North Korea Fires Two Missiles, Second Test in 3 Days

    Photo: Reuters

    The Facts

    • South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles on Tuesday, which landed in the sea off the country’s east coast. The missiles reportedly traveled about 385 miles.

    • This marks Pyongyang’s second launch in three days and the first since Seoul and the US began their largest joint military drills in five years, having ramped up defense cooperation in the face of expanded missile launches from the north in recent months.


    The Spin

    Pro-establishment narrative

    It's time to acknowledge that the strategy of persuading Pyongyang to make concessions through a policy mix of negotiation and deterrence has failed. Instead, Washington should resort to a strategy that has already proven successful and aim to collapse the regime from within via a media campaign to educate North Koreans about the country's desolate human rights situation. A rising population is the best way to achieve complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.

    Nerd narrative

    There's a 33% chance that there will be at least one fatality from an offensive nuclear detonation in North Korea by 2050, if there's an offensive detonation anywhere, according to the Metaculus prediction community.


    Establishment split

    CRITICAL

    PRO

    More neutral establishment stance articles

    Sign up to our daily newsletter