Oh, I’m aware of the likelihood of that. I was speaking about the question of the OP, which seemed to be written about a more “conventional” sort of use of a nuke.
The projected range of the NORK missile I’ve seen would have them trying for an air burst somewhere over Washington and Oregon. The left coast and big cities of the west would be royally screwed.
And NORK missile submarine that didn’t quickly have an “accident” would amount to dereliction of duty of any POTUS or Russian President.
There was a study during the cold war that looked at the idea of high altitude detonations to fry the incoming russian nukes just before turnover during midcourse flight. The neat thing about using nukes as interceptors is that close is ok and the emp fries the missiles guidance system.
Mid pacific for NKorea missiles doesn’t even harm the US. The Nike Hercules even had nukes for terminal defence. Better your nuke exploding at 100,000 ft plus than their nuke going off over your city at 2500 ft.
Lofting one or two nukes is a no win for N Korea, which is why we can’t let the pudgy boy king build 50 or 100 missiles and warheads.