North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un‘s belligerent threats and menacing military moves have raised alarms in South Korea, the United States and elsewhere. The latest from the New York Times:

A new assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm has concluded for the first time, with “moderate confidence,” that North Korea has learned how to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.
The assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been distributed to senior administration officials and members of Congress, cautions that the weapon’s “reliability will be low,” apparently a reference to the North’s difficulty in developing accurate missiles or, perhaps, to the huge technical challenges of designing a warhead that can survive the rigors of flight and detonate on a specific target.

Veteran national security correspondent Eli Lake writes at the Daily Beast:

North Korea has tested a nuclear device underground three times since 2006. But that doesn’t mean it can launch an actual nuclear missile. This would require, among other things, the ability to miniaturize the components that cause a nuclear explosion so that they can fit inside a warhead, which then rests atop a missile. This is no easy feat - and the United States intelligence community is divided on the question of whether North Korea is at the point of pulling it off.

The White House is now publicly addressing “bellicose threats from the unpredictable communist regime,” the Associated Press reports:

President Barack Obama urged calm, calling on Pyongyang to end its saber-rattling while sternly warning that he would “take all necessary steps” to protect American citizens. . . .
“Now is the time for North Korea to end the belligerent approach they have taken and to try to lower temperatures,” Obama said in his first public comments since Pyongyang threatened the United States and its allies in East Asia with nuclear attack.
Obama, speaking from the Oval Office, said he preferred to see the tensions on the peninsula resolved through diplomatic means, but added that “the United States will take all necessary steps to protect its people.”

What is signified by Kim’s “saber-rattling” and “bellicose threats”? Without regard for whether North Korea can actually make a nuclear missile work, why is the third-generation totalitarian dictator of a desperately impoverished nation making these threats? Believe it or not, the answer may be, “Happy Birthday, Grandpa!”

When North Korea‘s founder Kim Il Sung was alive, he’d celebrate his birthday by imprisoning hundreds of thousands of “ideological offenders” or unveiling a blueprint for a “communist paradise.” His son and heir, Kim Jong Il, turned his father’s April 15 birthday into the closest thing to a religious holiday that an atheist, communist regime can have, resetting the calendar to Kim time by calculating the official date from his father’s birth day and year.

The world is being threatened with nuclear war because Monday is the birthday of Kim Jong-Un’s communist grandfather? Here, Kim: Have a Snickers. Please.