Which is different from any point in the last 5 decades how?
The North Koreans know their day in the sun, conventional arms wise, passed long ago, and the only existential threat their military can pose is against their own people.
Hence their drive to build nuclear weapons - they recognize nukes are about the only thing which will give their continual sabre rattling any semblance of relevance.
The gap in hardware for them is far worse than it was in the Soviet era.