North Korea has fired a short range missile according to South Korea

Training, testing, another venue of diplomacy between allied countries, another venue for intramural turf wars, intimidating NK, China, and Russia, cover for nearby covert ops, provoking a reaction from NK to make them look bad or so they can study their capabilities further(missile launch, related logistics, comms) or(to get all Tom Clancy/4d chess about it) even to induce NK to "move shit around" in some predictable way so an asset in their country can travel somewhere he needs to or to move some obstacle out of his way. Also with any large bureaucracy there's always the possibility that it's just "that time again" and "this is the way it's always been done."

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - en.yna.co.kr