When Kim Jong Un’s half-brother was murdered in an international airport this year, many pointed to medieval motivations: the exiled sibling represented a threat and had to be eliminated.
Six months later, North Korea’s supreme leader continues to revel in shocking the global community as he shows off his growing military power with an endless stream of advanced weapons tests.
In its publicly stated views, Pyongyang portrays its audacious pursuit of nuclear weapons as a necessary defensive measure to ward off US aggression. But experts are divided on whether the secretive regime’s ambition is only self-preservation, or whether its intentions are altogether more aggressive.