Here’s a thought: both.

Save for the weather, North Korea would’ve tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last Thursday, at almost the same time as Iran did. It missed the date, coinciding with the anniversary of the 1953 armistice pact that ended the Korean War, likely thanks to a rain storm.

Nerveless, it tested the next day, creating a Mideast-East Asian stereo boom heard around the world.

American experts no longer think it’ll take North Korea years to be able to hit the continental United States. Most watchers now expect it sometime next year.

So President Trump has drawn the short straw. Three predecessors failed to stop the Kim regime’s nuclear and missile advances. If he wants to stop the Norks, Trump has no choice but to act — and all of his options are bad.

Meanwhile, much of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal is expected to unravel during Trump’s tenure as well.

What can he do?

Americans and others have long observed cooperation between these two rogue regimes. You don’t need to be a trained missile expert to notice the design similarities between North Korea’s home-built Rodong and its Iranian clone, the Shahab 3. Or the Rodong B and Shahab 4.

Iranian nuclear scientists were present at Pyongyang’s first nuclear test. Iran-allied Syria modeled its nuclear plant (later eliminated by Israel) on a similar North Korean one. Rather than violating the Obama deal by experimenting at home, Iran can advance its nuclear program by observing North Korea’s and contributing to its progress.

The mullahs have what Kim Jong-un needs most: cash. Pyongyang’s only foreign-currency-worthy export is weapons and knowing how to build and use them, which Iran craves. It’s a match made in hell.

So why are countries threatened by North Korea, like Japan, so eager to do business with Iran? After all, don’t the mullahs enable the North’s quest to develop the missiles that get fired near Japan?

“There’s no proof” of such cooperation, Tokyo officials said when I asked them about it on a recent trip to Japan.

They’re right. For decades, America shied away from revealing what the intelligence community knew about the Tehran-Pyongyang love affair because we dreamed of diplomatic breakthroughs on both fronts (and feared revealing spy methods).

After the Sunday ICBM test, such timidity is no longer an option.

America’s UN Ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted Sunday that “China is aware they must act” and that Japan and South Korea must increase pressure. It’s “not only a US problem” but one that requires an international solution.

Yet, an international solution has eluded Haley since July 4, the last time North Korea launched a missile designed to reach the continental US. Russian diplomats have ridiculously argued there’s no proof this was an ICBM, therefore no need to increase sanctions.

Such obfuscation will likely continue. Russia and China will block attempts to corner Kim and his henchmen — especially now that administration officials like CIA Director Mike Pompeo are starting to push the idea of toppling the Kim regime, which both Beijing and Moscow oppose.

So one action the United States can take would be to put forth a UN resolution naming and sanctioning persons and entities involved in the Iran-North Korea arms cooperation.

Western diplomats tell me it likely won’t pass. Yet they’re intrigued by publicly airing, Adlai Stevenson-like, America’s intel on Iran-Nork cooperation.

Iran’s missile program was, bizarrely, left out of Obama’s nuclear deal. Revealing the Tehran-Pyongyang nexus might convince allies wobbly about Tehran’s violations that the mullahs’ threat is global. It could also start the process of plugging a major cash source for the Kim regime.

We’ve long thought of Iran and North Korea as separate problems. Time for a holistic approach that will give a jolt to the diplomatic stalemate.

US flights over South Korean skies are helping. Talking publicly about adding Japan and South Korea to the global nuclear club may scare China into action. So will blacklisting companies that do business with Kim Jong-un. Regime change should be the ultimate target.

But a change in diplomatic strategy is needed too, and fast. Time to expose what everyone knows, but no one ever says out loud: Kim and the mullahs are BFFs. – source

But there is a side of KJU which is now just coming to light. His actions towards his own people are horrific. I believe that this man may be the most dangerous world leader since Adolph Hitler.

From nypost.com

Giant Worms are a Window into the hell of Life in North Korea

SEOUL — Parasitic worms found in a North Korean soldier who was critically injured during a desperate defection highlight nutrition and hygiene problems that experts say have plagued the isolated country for decades.

At a briefing Wednesday, lead surgeon Lee Cook-jong displayed photos showing dozens of flesh-colored parasites — including one 10.6 inches long — removed from the wounded soldier’s digestive tract during a series of surgeries to save his life.

“In my over 20-year-long career as a surgeon, I have only seen something like this in a textbook,” Lee said.

The parasites, along with kernels of corn in his stomach, may confirm what many experts and previous defectors have described as the food and hygiene situation for many North Koreans.

“Although we do not have solid figures showing health conditions of North Korea, medical experts assume that parasite infection problems and serious health issues have been prevalent in the country,” said Choi Min-Ho, a professor at Seoul National University College of Medicine who specializes in parasites.

The soldier’s condition was “not surprising at all considering the North’s hygiene and parasite problems,” he said.

The soldier was flown by helicopter to a hospital Monday after his dramatic escape to South Korea in a hail of bullets fired by North Korean soldiers.

He is believed to be an army staff sergeant in his mid-20s who was stationed in the Joint Security Area in the United Nations truce village of Panmunjom, according to Kim Byung-kee, a lawmaker of South Korea’s ruling party, briefed by the National Intelligence Service.

North Korea has not commented on the defection.

While the contents of the soldier’s stomach don’t necessarily reflect the population as a whole, his status as a soldier — with an elite assignment — would indicate he would at least be as well nourished as an average North Korean.

He was shot in his buttocks, armpit, back, shoulder and knee, among other wounds, according to the hospital where the soldier is being treated.

‘The best fertilizer’

Parasitic worms were also once common in South Korea 40 to 50 years ago, Lee noted during his briefing, but have all but disappeared as economic conditions greatly improved.

Other doctors have also described removing various types of worms and parasites from North Korean defectors.

Their continued prevalence north of the heavily fortified border that divides the two Koreas could be in part tied to the use of human excrement, often called “night soil.”

“Chemical fertilizer was supplied by the state until the 1970s, but from the early 1980s, production started to decrease,” said Lee Min-bok, a North Korean agriculture expert who defected to South Korea in 1995. “By the 1990s, the state could not supply it anymore, so farmers started to use a lot of night soil instead.”

In 2014, supreme leader Kim Jong Un personally urged farmers to use human feces, along with animal waste and organic compost, to fertilize their fields.

A lack of livestock, however, made it difficult to find animal waste, said Lee, the agriculture expert.

Even harder to overcome, he said, is the view of night soil as the “best fertilizer in North Korea,” despite the risk of worms and parasites.

“Vegetables grown in it are considered more delicious than others,” Lee said.

Limited diets

Surgeon Lee Cook-jong gives a briefing during a news conference at a hospital in Suwon, South Korea

The medical briefing described the wounded soldier as 5 feet 5 inches and 132 pounds with his stomach containing corn. It’s a staple grain that more North Koreans may be relying on in the wake of what the United Nations has called the worst drought since 2001.

Imported corn, which is less preferred but cheaper to obtain than rice, has tended to increase in years when North Koreans are more worried about their seasonal harvests.

Between January and September this year, China exported nearly 49,000 tons of corn to North Korea, compared to only 3,125 tons in all of 2016, according to data released by Beijing.

Despite the drought and international sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program, the cost of corn and rice has remained relatively stable, according to a Reuters analysis of market data collected by the defector-run Daily NK website.

Since the 1990s, when government rations failed to prevent a famine from hitting the country, North Koreans have gradually turned to markets and other private means to feed themselves.

The World Food Programme says a quarter of North Korean children 6 to 59 months old, who attend nurseries that the organization assists, suffer from chronic malnutrition.

On average, North Koreans are less nourished than their southern neighbors. The WFP says around one in four children have grown less tall than their South Korean counterparts. A study from 2009 said preschool children in the North were up to 5 inches shorter and up to 15 pounds lighter than those brought up in the South.

“The main issue in DPRK is a monotonous diet — mainly rice/maize, kimchi and bean paste — lacking in essential fats and protein,” the WFP told Reuters in a statement last month. – source

This maniacal tyrant knows no boundaries in his complete disregard for human life.   Brethren, this man may indeed be the catalyst for WWIII.  We know it is coming and we know that the Word of God makes it clear that in these times there are “wars and rumors of wars.”

My heart breaks for the citizens of North Korea. We know that there is an underground church – our brethren – who will pay with their lives if caught. Pray for them!  Pray for all of the people who are trapped under this insane tyrant. Pray for the people of South Korea as well!

MARANATHA!