North Korea's missile tests challenge Biden as Olympics loom

On Thursday morning, as Japan's Olympic torch relay began its four-month journey toward Tokyo, North Korea sent two ballistic missiles arcing across the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan. The first was detected shortly after 7 a.m., traveling roughly 420 kilometers before splashing down. Twenty minutes later, a second followed, covering about 430 kilometers. U.S., South Korean, and Japanese authorities all confirmed the launches. It was the first ballistic missile test North Korea had conducted in nearly a year, and the first to occur under President Joe Biden's watch since he took office in January.

The timing was deliberate, if not explicitly stated. Just days earlier, Biden had dismissed a separate North Korean cruise missile test as routine—"business as usual," he called it. The ballistic launches suggested Pyongyang was testing how far the new administration would tolerate. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called the tests a threat to regional peace and a violation of United Nations resolutions. South Korea's National Security Council expressed deep concern. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meeting with South Korean officials in Seoul, warned that all parties needed to abandon military escalation. The launches overshadowed what should have been a celebratory moment for Japan.

For the Biden administration, the missiles posed an immediate policy problem. The White House and State Department offered no official comment on the test. Behind the scenes, officials were in the final stages of completing a comprehensive North Korea policy review—one that had been signaling a hard line on denuclearization, human rights, and sanctions while simultaneously making diplomatic overtures that Pyongyang had so far rejected. The contradiction was becoming harder to ignore. Vipin Narang, a nuclear affairs expert at MIT, framed the dilemma plainly: "Every day that passes without a deal that tries to reduce the risks posed by North Korea's nuclear and missile arsenal is a day that it gets bigger and badder."

The advances North Korea had made were not theoretical. In January, leader Kim Jong Un had declared that his military possessed the technology to miniaturize nuclear warheads and mount them on tactical missiles. Markus Garlauskas, a former U.S. National Intelligence Officer for North Korea now at the Atlantic Council, warned that downplaying these tests would be a mistake. "Downplaying North Korean ballistic missile tests will not help U.S. diplomacy with North Korea in any way, and would only encourage North Korea to further test the bounds of what the new administration can accept," he said. The short-range missiles being tested could threaten South Korea and the 28,500 American troops stationed there.

North Korea's weapons development had continued unabated through 2020, in violation of UN sanctions dating back to 2006. The country had funded this work partly through cyber theft—approximately $300 million stolen through hacking operations, according to UN sanctions monitors. The arsenal was growing not in isolation but with apparent Chinese acquiescence. Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, noted that North Korea's military activities after reaffirming ties with Beijing raised uncomfortable questions about Chinese complicity in sanctions evasion. This, he predicted, would intensify calls to sanction Chinese firms involved in illicit trade with the North.

The diplomatic landscape had shifted since the Trump era. North Korea had announced a moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests in early 2018, ahead of the historic summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump. But after negotiations faltered, Pyongyang said it no longer considered itself bound by that pledge. Biden's own diplomatic overtures had gone unanswered. North Korea demanded that the United States cease what it called hostile policies and military exercises with South Korea—demands the new administration showed no sign of meeting. Analysts had also noted a subtle but significant change in American rhetoric: the emphasis had shifted from "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" to "denuclearization of North Korea," a distinction likely to infuriate Pyongyang, which saw the peninsula's status as inseparable from its own security.

Thursday's launches, then, were not a sign that diplomacy was dead. Rather, they illustrated a harder truth: North Korea's weapons program advanced every single day, with or without talks. Each test improved the regime's technology and expanded its bargaining power. The missiles that flew that morning were a reminder that time was not on Washington's side. The Olympics would proceed. The policy review would conclude. But the arsenal would keep growing, and the window for negotiation—if one existed at all—was closing.