Five days after the U.S. and South Korea started their joint military drill, North Korea showed no signs of the threats and protests previously seen against the exercise. In past years, the DPRK had often denounced the springtime drill as a rehearsal for an invasion.

“North Korea launched projectiles four times in March last year,” said Cho Han-bum, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU). “Moreover, at the Eighth Party Congress in January this year, Kim Jong Un himself urged the U.S. and South Korea to stop the joint exercises, so the fact that the North