Are they getting ready to break out and vastly expand their arsenal and stockpile?

After three years of diplomatic deadlock, the Obama administration says it is willing to hold preliminary talks with North Korea to probe its intentions and assess the prospects of ridding the country of nuclear weapons.

Given the Obama administration’s performance with Iran, it’s a distinct possibility that northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program is about to take off.

In the case of Iran, the US has joined with several world powers in negotiating the framework agreement to prevent Teheran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

North Korea, though, does not seem to be looking to disarm anytime soon.

And neither is Iran looking at nuclear disarmament. There’s a hint there.

And

“We want to meet with the North first without any conditions to determine whether it has real commitment (toward denuclearization),” [RoK’s Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Hwang Joon-kook] said in Beijing on Thursday.

What was it someone said about doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results?

Oh, and here’s northern Korea’s answer:

Pyongyang answered the overture with a fresh show of force—test-firing a new ballistic missile from a submarine.

North Korea claimed Saturday that it successfully test-fired the newly developed ballistic missile. Not long after that announcement, South Korean officials said the North fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast.

That’s pretty clear, to those willing to listen.

Even if they have to create the land, first.

China’s mysterious campaign to build artificial islands in disputed waters of the South China Sea has grown to cover roughly 2,000 acres, a senior defense official said Friday, as the Pentagon issued a report warning the sites could be used to bolster the country’s military infrastructure.

There’s nothing mysterious about it. This sort of thing is being built to support the People’s Republic of China’s air and sea forces as the PRC moves to concretize and enforce its attempts to occupy the East and South China Seas.

The DOD report warned that while Beijing’s island construction intent is unclear, five emerging outposts in the Spratly Islands could be used for surveillance systems, harbors and logistical support. The report said they could also hold “at least one airfield.”

That’s just dissembling or timidity. There’s nothing unclear about PRC intentions with these construction projects. Many of the sites are within the Exclusive Economic Zones of other nations on the rim of the Seas. If the PRC were just building these things to support fishery, or oil and gas, or rare earth mining and processing, they’d get permission from the host nations and cut costs by partnering with them for the development of these sites and split the processors’ output.

The PRC, though, is holding out, on threat of gunfire, those nations.