This week, with a 1 hour sham trial, North Korea sentenced 21 year old American, Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labor. But that’s not all the worst totalitarian regime in the world is doing. They are flexing their military muscles with ballistic missile launches as well. Last week the regime fired two missiles east from the North Hwanghae province, south of Pyongyang.

And then…

North Korea has launched two ballistic missiles off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, the South Korean military and U.S. defense officials said Friday.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said that one ballistic missile flew a distance of 800 kilometers overland toward the sea off the country’s east coast, while a second projectile, assumed to be a missile, was detected by radar but disappeared at an altitude of about 17 kilometers.

That test and the one conducted yesterday are in blatant defiance of the sanctions imposed on North Korea after the sanctions the UN Security council put in place after the country’s nuclear test in January.

Furthermore the range of these new missiles, according to experts, has a longer reach than any in the past.

It seems that the sanctions imposed by the UN, the reactions from Japan, and the new sanctions put in place by the U.S. are serving only to anger Kim Jong-un rather than cause the dictator to stand down from his saber rattling. Instead he is ramping it up even further. The joint South Korean – US military drills currently underway aren’t helping matters either.

Around 17,000 U.S. military personnel and 300,000 South Korean troops are taking part in what the South Korean Defense Ministry described as the “largest ever” joint military exercises.

North Korea has warned that it would make a “pre-emptive and offensive nuclear strike” in response to the joint exercises.

The medium range missiles North Korea has launched in the last 10 days should be definitive cause for concern. These successful test launches puts North Korea even closer to long range missile capability. Basically, North Korea is following the pattern that many experts from South Korea to the US were predicting would happen. Launch missiles with dummy trigger devices on them to see if they would survive the high pressure reentry into the earth’s atmosphere and still have the ability to detonate on cue. The real trigger devices in question? They’d be carrying uranium or plutonium.

YOU DON’T SAY: North Korea Missile Launch Repeats Pattern of Defiance.
Even China is getting … https://t.co/0TSNMV52Ah via @instapundit

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) March 18, 2016

In other words, against any and all sanctions imposed or statements made – even from China – North Korea continues onward to weaponizing themselves into full nuclear missile capability.

The sternly worded warnings don’t seem to be stopping North Korea from moving forward.

North Korea is talking tougher now in part because it feels it has the nuclear weapons to back up its threats: https://t.co/ygzLpomzbZ

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) March 18, 2016

Quite frankly, North Korea IS talking and acting tougher than the country has before. In fact Kim Jong-un is directly threatening the continental United States. And that should have us all sitting up and taking notice…even those who are running for the highest office in the land. Especially in light of the fact that South Korea, a friend to the United States for decades, is in direct line of fire AND is home to many of our men and women in the military.

Is anyone listening to North Korea? We should be. They are doing more than just rattling their sabers. Their nuclear missile capability is getting better each time they launch a missile. North Korea sees that U.S. has stayed weak in the face of Iran’s defiance of its own Iran Deal and that emboldens the totalitarian regime even more. We cannot afford to just shrug our shoulders, offer up a hug and a song, and hope it all turns out for the best. North Korea is a regime that never has played nice and we would do well to remember that.