It's increasingly uncertain if any one person or group is in charge in North Korea. In the past week,  North Korea has both agreed to keep on reconnecting the two Koreas via a DMZ rail line, and threatened Japan with missile tests unless billions of dollars in "reparations" were paid. Some South Koreans sense panic in the north. With the famine still present, fuel oil supplies from the United States cut off and the economy sinking further into ruin, the northern leaders may finally be realizing that their situation is hopeless. The northern leaders may also be noticing that the new recruits for the army are smaller and weaker, having spent the last decade growing up with a spreading famine. No money for armed forces modernization has most military equipment several decades behind what the south has.