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Putin and Russian weapons are the unnoticed wildcard in the North Korean threat.
I believe Putin will be supplying North Korea will a great amount of help, just to keep the United States off guard
and then Putin will become more involved in the middle east, while we are bogged down in North Korea.

First let me state my background:

I've got 5 short tours in the ROK randomly from 1985 thru 1995 over 26 + years in USAF Air Traffic Control. Too man people have little or no idea of what South Korea's military is capable of, and just how closely they mirror the United States' capabilities.
But no matter how you evaluate the situation, you must understand that most of North Korea's military is 'brainwashed' and a lot of the North Korean civilians are "brainwashed'.

Now a lot has changed since my departure from the ROK in the summer of 1995, but even then, the U.S. military had intel that several North Korean Generals wanted to start the War and were under the belief that they would lose.
They wanted to get the 'loss' over with, so the recovery could begin, because the North Korean people were under such dire conditions.

Northwest of Seoul, North Korea has a runway built into the side of a mountain as a tunnel that's exit is pointed straight at Seoul.
That runway is just large enough for fighters about the size of our F-5s or F-16s to use. The hangers are on the other side of the mountain, tunneled into the side of the mountain, similar to hangers we have in Iceland and Greenland.

As to Franz-Stefan Gady's assumptions:

" ...First, despite treaty obligations laid out in the 1961 Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, China will not come to the defense of North Korea in the event of a North Korean surprise attack on the South.

Second, Pyongyang will not use nuclear weapons to destroy Seoul.

Third, North Korea — even if it has the capability — will not fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) against a target in the continental United States.

Fourth, the United States will not fire nuclear missiles against Pyongyang.

The core belief underlying these assumptions is
that North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, is primarily motivated by regime survival
and as a consequence would not unnecessarily expose Pyongyang to a U.S. nuclear attack and immediately escalate the conflict to the nuclear level as long as he assumes that he can retain a second-strike capability.

Furthermore, under this scenario, Kim assumes that South Korean and American war plans do not entail his removal from power
(which, not only due to recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump, may be a flawed assumption). "

I do NOT agree that China will stay out of it.
China's interest are 'China First'.
They my use their leverage to get us out of the area for their own interest in Taiwan and their oil interest in the southwestern Pacific north of the Philippines.

I do NOT agree that North Korea will not use nuclear weapons.
North Korea is an expert at "Brinksmanship", and if they believe they're going to be destroyed, they'll take everyone down with them.

I do NOT agree that North Korea will not fire an ICBM at the United States, although I don;t believe they can get one to work, without it being 'EMP-ed" or shot down out of the sky.
Franz-Stefan Gady's assumption that "Kim Jong-un, is primarily motivated by regime survival" is different than what I assume.
I believe that Kim Jong-un, is primarily motivated by his own survival.
If he thinks his survival is no longer tenable, then all bets are off as to just how far he'll go.

HOW the war will start, in my opinion, is entirely different than Franz-Stefan Gady's assumption.
But I don't believe that should be revealed.
Our military starts by taking out the most serious threats first.
But we shouldn't back off until we can hand over total control of North Korea to South Korea.
There will be a lot of North Koreans that will be killed.
But it needs to be done, in order to solve this problem that William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and the DemocRATS made a lot worse !

NK will use min/max artillery approach conventionally to annoy/threaten Seoul with the intent of luring USAF into NK airspace...where NK will pop off an aerial nuke over their own soil (because that is a “defensive” use of a nuke that China won’t spank them for) on the hope that a lucky blast will down a couple of USAF airborne assets which will temporarily cause the USA to stop flying over NK airspace during combat operations.

Likewise, NK will use their rustbucket subs as bait to lure in a USN sub-tracker, where a submerged nuclear mine will be suicide-detonated in the hopes that the blast will sink a U.S. submarine, keeping other USN assets out of NK waters.

In the meantime, NK’s army and civilian population will remain in NK’s vast underground tunnel network for 60 to 90 days, simply letting their entire surface infrastructure be destroyed.

At some point, NK will then send all of its air and army assets Southward while launching all of their ICBM’s in a blitz...hoping to catch the USA during resupply due to expending our munitions the previous 90 days taking out their surface infrastructure.

If they capture Seoul, they will plant a suicide nuke therein and threaten to detonate it if we try to reconquer the city.

Their plan will then call for reparations to be made if we don’t want Seoul destroyed.

...anyway...that’s what you get when you wargame them.