It is now widely believed that North Korea’s decision to move a missile to their east coast was a preliminary to a test launch, which would be seen as a “face-saving” measure domestically as talk of war quiets down.
The White House appeared to acknowledge this theory, pushed by multiple analysts, as likely, with spokesman Jay Carney adding “we have seen them launch missiles in the past,” and that the US wouldn’t be surprised if they tested another one.
Over the past couple of weeks the US has added a massive amount of high end military hardware to the area around the Korean Peninsula, and North Korean officials have repeatedly lamented that war could be days, or in some cases hours, away.
Though most of the world sees each of these blow-ups as a unique and grim prelude to nuclear war, South Koreans have mostly greeted the matter with ambivalence, noting that similar cases crop up pretty much every year during the US-South Korea military drills, which are ongoing.