North Korea Unveils Its Nuclear ‘Treasured Swords’ to the World Again

North Korea’s announcement that “normal operation” was again underway at its Yongbyon nuclear complex sent a wave of anxiety through the world’s Pyongyang watchers.

A man watches a news report at a railway station in Seoul on Sept. 15, 2015, on the confirmation from North Korea that the Yongbyon nuclear reactor seen as the country's main source of weapons-grade plutonium had resumed normal operations, raising a further red flag amid growing signs the North may be considering a long-range rocket launch next month in violation of U.N. resolutions. North Korea mothballed the Yongbyon reactor in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord, but began renovating it after its last nuclear test in 2013. Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

North Korea’s announcement that “normal operation” was again underway at its Yongbyon reactor complex sent a characteristic wave of anxiety through the world’s Pyongyang watchers. The country’s nuclear ambitions had, after all, been largely forgotten in what seemed like a lull in North Korea’s fractious relations with the wider world.

Even as the Korean Peninsula itself endured a summer of high tension, the West’s complicated fear of North Korea has been displaced by a myopic public narrative currently fixated on the European refugee crisis, the murderous idiocy of ISIS, and the travails of Donald Trump.

Things are clearly rather different on the inside. The regime’s primary tool of geopolitical leverage can have slipped nobody’s mind—and North Korea’s recent statements speak volumes about how the Kim regime conceives of its nuclear program.

In North Korea's worldview, nuclear capability is the only thing that can ward off the chaos and collapse that befell Iraq, Libya, and Syria.