Updated July 05, 2017 14:54:45

The world has laughed heartily at "Kim Fatty the Third" — the irreverent nickname the Chinese have given to North Korea's moon-faced dynastic leader — ever since his rise to power in late 2011.

Suddenly, the screeching engines of his regime's most successful long-range missile test have drowned out the mirth and are forcing a rapid re-think of his intentions.

Official state media imagery shows Kim Jong-un and his military cadre fist-pumping the air in joy after watching their weapon pierce through a clear blue sky in some secret place on July 4.

North Korea claims it has launched its first ever intercontinental ballistic missile which it says could hit "anywhere in the world". But how does that claim really stack up?

The jubilation appears to be a North Korean way of saying 'those who laugh last laugh loudest' in a game of brinkmanship that now extends well beyond the Korean Peninsula all the way to America's Pacific north-west and as far south as Darwin.

Predictably, its apparent capacity to blast a 'Hwasong-14' missile transcontinental has injected an urgency in defence thinking everywhere from the Kremlin to Beijing, from Washington to Canberra.

Calling for urgent international action and admitting to an element of surprise, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has acknowledged "it's the scale and pace" of the missile testing that poses a serious and direct threat to Australia and the US.

Fast-track to global menace

Privately, a senior Australian Defence official has elevated North Korea to the "number one" threat now facing the nation and the region, which is a markedly more alarmist outlook than the official view contained in the Defence White Paper published only 14 months ago.

Photo: Mr Kim's behaviour is entirely consistent with his stated goal to "rapidly mass produce" his offensive weapons. (KCNA via KNS)

Back then Defence assessed the threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile attack on Australia as "low" and forecast that North Korea's "threatening behaviour" with missile tests would be carried out "to try to extract aid and concessions from the international community".

In fact, throughout the frenzied pace of tests in 2017 there is so far no evidence to support the idea that Pyongyang is trying to extract any deal with any country.

On the contrary, Mr Kim's behaviour is entirely consistent with his stated goal to "rapidly mass produce" his offensive weapons to make good on his many threats to harm his enemies with "catastrophic consequences".

There is a serious risk the militaries of the western world have underestimated the North's capacities and misjudged its leader, who may well be proving he is every bit the "pretty smart cookie" US President Donald Trump has described him as.

The deadly 'what if?'

Photo: Defence organisations around the world are urgently re-thinking their approach to North Korea in the wake of the missile launch. (Supplied: KCTV)

With Russia and China now overtly engaged in applying pressure, diplomacy is fully engaged and the notoriously compromised UN Security Council could finally display a united will to bring North Korea to heel.

Diplomacy has to work — because the consequences of failure are lethal.

If the US truly reaches the limits of its "strategic patience" towards Mr Kim, as it says it has, the option of a pre-emptive strike on his military installations comes into play — and with it, the obvious risk of full-blown war.

Planning for that scenario is incredibly advanced.

Getting the 'cookie' to crumble

Leaked sections of the classified 2015 war plan for the Peninsula, called OPLAN 5015, reportedly set out details for missile strikes on all of the North's missile, nuclear and command and control bases, along with invasions by allied special forces to capture or kill the leadership.

While the immense resources of US forces in the South would combine with the Republic of Korea's military, allies including Japan and Australia are also counted as contributors.

Even with guaranteed passivity by China and Russia, the dangers of pre-emptive strikes are enormous if they fail to remove every major element of the North's armoury — remembering Seoul is less than 50 kilometres from the demilitarised zone.

Nor could the US or the South rely on their famed technical superiority to fully protect their forces in the region.

So-called "tactical missile defence shields" are nowhere near as impregnable as their hype suggests and, in Australia's case, its ageing naval fleet is still years away from renewal with more sophisticated systems to be placed in a full-blown combat zone.

The last time the Korean Peninsula exploded into war more than 4 million lives were lost.

Mr Kim is goading the West into some form of reaction.

The smartest response is a set of credible threats he feels compelled to respond to, or "red lines" he must never cross.

Mapping them and applying them is a mammoth test the Trump administration and its allies now face to force that "pretty smart cookie" to crumble.

Photo: The "scale and pace" of the missile tests pose a serious and direct threat to Australia and the US, Julie Bishop says. (Supplied: KCTV)

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, defence-and-national-security, security-intelligence, government-and-politics, world-politics, korea-democratic-people-s-republic-of

First posted July 05, 2017 13:37:04