Grave concerns that DPRK crisis is getting out of hand

Unilateral countermoves by individual stakeholders have proven insufficient, and ineffective, in reining in the nuclear weapons program of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as its latest missile test on Wednesday demonstrated.

While the accumulative effect of Pyongyang's most recent series of tests has been a hardening of the consensus among the stakeholders that they should come to an end, there is still no well-coordinated collective response to achieve that aim.

The Republic of Korea responded to the latest DPRK missile test with a missile firing of its own within minutes, knowing full well it was a meaningless gesture.