What North Korea misses, over and again, is not the disaffection of the United States, its imperial nemesis since 1950 if not earlier, but the reluctance of Washington, Seoul and Tokyo to take it seriously.

Over the last few years, all three have joined ranks to make their alliance more cohesive. Yet North Korea has been left hanging on to the short end of the proverbial stick at least since 2018. Why?

That was the year when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed with the then South Korean president Moon Jae-in to reduce the military outposts on the border that separates the two Koreas at the 38th parallel. During that period, Pyongyang was expected to reduce border tensions in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which has split the Korean Peninsula since 1953.

It is often said that the DMZ is the most militarized area in the world. But it is also an  example of how three generations of leaders of one of the most intensely insecure regimes have had to endure the threat of being toppled or assassinated.

While no attempts have succeeded, it does not mean no one has tried. Even in South Korea the killing of president Park Chung-hee in 1979 remains shrouded in befuddling mystery, with the chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency taking on the central role of ending Park’s life in the Blue House. Leaders in North Korea could not have failed to take the lesson to heart. Politics in the Korean peninsula is toxic.

As murder did not change the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula at all, the North's assassination attempts did become bolder in 1983. A bomb was planted in the room where the South Korean president and his ministers were meeting Burmese leaders in Rangoon.