My guess is that Kim miscalculated. He is an extreme addictive/dysfunctional personality, as have been other leaders of his ilk—notably Hitler. One hallmark of addiction/dysfunction is that the deeper a person slides into it the more impaired their judgment becomes. Thankfully, toward the end Hitler was making catastrophically bad judgment calls and calculations. I think Kim has done similarly.
Spot-on analysis.
I said this the other day, the difference is that Hitler, at the end, was moving non-existent army divisions where Kim has real ones.
It begs the question, what would Hitler have done if he had just a couple crude nuclear devices?
A Chinese analyst recently stated that we must realize that North Korea is not a “rational actor.”