The repeated North Korean provocations at the start of 2024 has led some to fear the beginning of a new Korean War. On Friday, February 2, several cruise missiles were fired into the Yellow Sea. This followed the firing of a Hwasal-2 cruise missile on January 30 and artillery fire near the South Korean islands of Yeonpyeong, Baengnyeong and Daecheong on January 5. The frequency of these operations also raises fears of a seventh nuclear test.

All this is accompanied by aggressive rhetoric that specifically targets South Korea: on January 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called it the "main enemy" and threatened to annihilate it in the event of provocation. At the end of December, he had referred to the two Koreas as "two nations hostile to each other," declaring that it was pointless to seek reconciliation and unification. These remarks "end the treatment of relations with Seoul as a special, inner-Korean affair," wrote Ruedige Frank, a professor at the University of Vienna, on 38 North, a website dedicated to analyzing North Korea.

Observers such as Robert L. Carlin, a former Northeast Asia specialist at the US State Department, and Siegfried S. Hecker, a nuclear nonproliferation expert, have expressed deep concern. "[L]ike his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war," they said in a jointly written article also on 38 North. According to them, Kim, confronted by the failure of his diplomacy, including at the 2019 Hanoi summit with US president Donald Trump (2016-2020), and by serious internal difficulties, has given up on a goal that had been pursued since the 1990s: "normalizing relations with the United States as a buffer against China and Russia."

"The first obvious signs that a decision had been made and a decisive break with the past was underway came in the summer and autumn of 2021, apparently the result of a reevaluation in Pyongyang of shifts in the international landscape and signs—at least to the North Koreans—that the United States was in global retreat." This change of perspective would have led to a strategic reorientation towards China and Russia.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, relations between Pyongyang and Moscow have indeed been good, giving Pyongyang the confidence it needs to step up its provocations. Kim visited Russia in September 2023, and President Vladimir Putin may soon visit Pyongyang. Military cooperation is said to be underway. Russia has resumed deliveries of refined oil to North Korea, which were interrupted during the pandemic. As for China, satellite images released on January 23 suggest a resumption of trade at the border town of Sinuiju (in northwest North Korea).

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