It’s been a busy March for North Korea’s young dictator Kim Jong-un, who first tested a missile, then declared a nuclear airstrike on the United States, and in a final flourish, wants to “rain bullets” on the country’s neighbour to the South.

Nobody knows if the Stalinist military dictatorship in North Korea is part of a long-running stand-up comedy show, where the canned laughter will break out any moment; or a very real threat to global security. What is known is that the country is suffering under UN sanctions, but seems to have deep pockets when it comes to testing missiles or staging vast public displays of loyalty to the regime.

For years, the brinkmanship by North Korea towards the South has been treated with kid gloves, and usually, a US-brokered peace of sorts has been maintained between the two Koreas. China’s historical support of the North and America’s of the South has created a typically divided picture in the region.

However, someone’s re-drawing the outlines once again, as the recent change in attitudes shows. In its first term, the Obama administration played down the threats from North Korea, and avoided responding to provocations by the regime. In the second term, however, this approach has been replaced by a more visibly military response to the “bluster” of Kim Jong-un.

Last week, the Pentagon took the unprecedented step of announcing that it had dispatched two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers to fly a round-trip mission from their base in Missouri and drop dummy bombs in South Korea.

Earlier in March, the US also deployed nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the peninsula and announced that it had bolstered missile defence forces in Alaska with 14 interceptors in response to North Korea’s threats of missile attacks.

There has also been a shift in the stance of China. Even though China supports North Korea economically, it helped to draft and voted to pass UN sanctions against Pyongyang last week. 

The change in Chinese leadership may have triggered this retrospection on the usefulness of North Korea as a regional ally based purely on ideology. Added to this are the inexperience of Kim Jong-un, and a new and untested president in South Korea.

However the endgame is unlikely to be simple despite all the grandstanding by North Korea.

The South’s capital, Seoul, with a population of nearly 11mn people, lies well within range of North Korean artillery.

Often seen by the world through the prism of nuclear weapons and human rights, pushing the North Korean regime to war may end up in a unified Korean peninsula created on the terms of the more financially robust economy and US-allied troops of the South.

Would it be wise for the US to commit itself to securing the unified Korea given its disastrous record in Iraq and Afghanistan?