From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, as tensions heightened between the United States and North Korea,

North Korea is literally parading ballistic missiles down its streets to demonstrate its military strength.

The US is combating the nuclear threat in two connected ways through diplomacy and through sabotage.

It's Monday, April 17th.

We begin with sabotage.

Hello, David. It's Michael Barbaro. How are you? Good. Welcome home from Moscow. Thank you.

David Sanger is just back from Russia and right back at it. David, what happened with this missile launch in North Korea over the weekend?

Well, what happened, Michael, was they had another pretty spectacular failure.

It went off course, went right off into the ocean just seconds after launch.

That's significant because they've had a whole series of these.

And because they know at this point that what scares the United States the most is the likelihood that North Korea,

at some point in the next few years, will be able to shrink its nuclear weapons down to a size that they can fit under the nose,

cone to one of these missiles and design a missile that can reach most cities in the United States. So they've been having trouble.

And it was a particular embarrassment because it came just hours after they had this remarkable parade through the middle of Pyongyang,

with capital, showing off all of their new missile designs from short range to medium to big long inner continental missiles that could reach the United States.

And what was so significant about the timing of all this?

Well, the timing of the parade and the launch was set to the 105th birthday of Kim Il-sung, the country's founder and founder of the North Korean nuclear program.

He was the grandfather of the current head of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

And he's such a revered figure, people are wearing buttons with Kim Il-sung's image on it,

that Kim Jong-un has done everything he can to wrap his own persona in his grandfather's.

He's cut his hair to look like his grandfather's, worn the same kind of suits.

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