By the rockets’ red glare

IN JANUARY North Korea detonated a nuclear device underground, its fourth such test and the first, it claimed, to show that it could build a thermonuclear weapon. In February it successfully launched a satellite. It has since been testing missile technology at a hectic pace. In March, its leader, Kim Jong Un, posed with a model of a nuclear weapon core and the re-entry vehicle of a long-range missile. On May 7th he told the congress of the Korean Workers’ Party in Pyongyang that his nuclear-weapons and missile programmes had brought the country “dignity and national power”. He boasts of his ability to “burn Manhattan down to ashes”.

The nuclear test, most experts believe, did not in fact demonstrate the ability to build a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. The satellite does not seem to be working. Some of the missile tests failed. Mr Kim says a lot of nasty things. But there is a limit as to how much you can downplay this sequence of events. As Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, puts it: “Just because Pyongyang wants us to pay attention, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.”