The United Nations and North Korea have long been in a standoff. North Korea is consistently conducting missile launch tests in order to protect itself from a potential invasion from the United States. The country has already conducted five missile launches in 2022 alone. In the last two weeks at the time of publication, North Korea has already launched two missiles off of the east coast.

With the most recent missile, it was noted by The New York Times that it traveled at 10 times the speed of sound. The missile launches on behalf of North Korea have been in violation of numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit North Korea from testing missiles.

In response to the missile launch, China and Russia negated a United States bid to impose a U.N. sanction on five North Koreans because they believe that North Korea may resume tests of long-range missiles, South China Morning Post reports.

On Jan. 25, North Korea fired two more cruise missiles into the sea off of the east coast. Cruise missiles are not banned by the United Nations. South Korea’s military is assessing these launches to determine the diagnostics of the missiles. North Korea has mentioned that they are willing to talk so long as the United Nations drop their “hostile policy” measures, according to Reuters.

Dwight Hahn, professor of political science at John Carroll., explained the strategy behind North Korea’s erratic actions. “North Korea is building up its nuclear capacity in order to defend their regime from an attack from the United States or another power. This is being treated as a threat by many nations, most notably Japan, South Korea, and the United States. If recent reports of its ability to develop a maneuverable hypersonic missile are credible, this is a way for North Korea to signal to the United States that it has the capacity to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons even if the United States has an effective anti-ballistic missile system covering the Pacific Ocean.”