Honeymoon over - Part 2

North Korea said on Thursday that it test-fired a new type of “tactical guided weapon,” in what appeared to be a warning from Kim Jong-un to President Trump that unless once-promising negotiations with Washington resume, the two countries could again be on a collision course.

[...]

[Kim's] presence sent an unmistakable message: That the North would continue to amass new arms while the standoff with Washington continued. Mr. Kim hailed the event as having “very weighty significance.”

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The North’s official Korean Central News Agency did not specify what type of weapon was involved in the test. But there was no evidence the test involved a nuclear detonation or an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The North has observed a voluntary moratorium of those tests since November 2017, and President Trump has repeatedly said that the North’s self-imposed suspension of nuclear and long-range missile tests was one of his administration’s biggest achievements, crediting himself with averting war by first threatening the North with “fire and fury” and then holding two face-to-face meetings with Mr. Kim.

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[I]n Hanoi in February [Kim and Trump] failed to reach an agreement, after Mr. Trump rejected, at the insistence of his top advisers, Mr. Kim’s proposal to lift the harshest sanctions on the North in return for suspending operations at North Korea’s largest nuclear facility. Since then, there has been virtually no communication, much less negotiation, between the two countries.

[...]

Following the breakdown, satellite imagery showed new activities at some of the North’s long-range rocket test and missile development sites.

Shin Beom-chul, a North Korea expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said that with this test, Mr. Kim was exhorting his people to prepare for a military standoff with the United States.

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Now Mr. Kim appears to be carefully calibrating his expressions of displeasure.

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In recent days the North Korean leader has said he would give the United States until the end of the year to come up with concrete proposals that would lift sanctions on the North.

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The test announced on Thursday suggested that Mr. Kim was willing to consider gradually raising the stakes sooner, and making Mr. Trump fear that his signature foreign policy initiative could collapse before the 2020 elections.

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Shortly after announcing the weapons test, the North Koreans threw in a new condition to any continued talks: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, considered a hard-liner who helped persuade Mr. Trump to reject North Korea’s proposed terms for an agreement, could not be part of future negotiations.

  NYT

Oh dear.

Part 1

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.