North Korea's nuclear chest-beating has achieved the seemingly impossible by aligning the concerns of South Korea, Japan and even China, three Asian neighbors that have a long history of strained ties.
While all those countries have separate aims and interests, they share with the United States a mutual interest in containing the North Korean regime, restraining its rhetoric and keeping Pyongyang's nuclear option in a box, says Richard Bush III, the director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.
"One charming thing the North Koreans possess is an ability to drive others closer together," he says.
North Korea in recent weeks has threatened the United States, South Korea and Japan with annihilation and its nuclear and missile tests have been carried out in defiance of Beijing's warnings.
International condemnation has been fierce, aside from former NBA star and recent visitor Dennis Rodman, who declared his admiration for leader Kim Jong Un. "I love the guy. He's awesome. He's so honest," Rodman told ABC.
North Korea's recent behavior prompted Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, a professor of American foreign relations at San Diego State University and a national fellow at the Hoover Institution to write in The New York Times that "China, Japan and South Korea should be encouraged to rank this problem No.1."
SOUTH KOREA
North Korea's saber-rattling is heard loudest just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Memories of the the Korean War are never far from the surface, and are periodically refreshed by events such as a 2010 torpedo attack on a South Korean ship that killed 46 sailors. Pyongyang followed up that attack by shelling the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong.
South Korean president at the time of the 2010 sinking, Lee Myung-bak, was criticized for his perceived weak response.
"I think that the North thought that the sinking of the South Korean ship was a huge victory because all South Korea did was sit there and wring its hands and appeal for international investigations and assistance," says George Lopez, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame who served on as a U.N. monitor for sanctions on North Korea.
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