North Korea

Well North Korea is in the news again now, maybe I had better write something about them. They are about to test-launch an ICBM. Now this is confusing in and of itself. The other countries that have ICBMs, Russia, France, the US, the UK and China are all vast countries, or have vast territories, with plenty of room to test an ICBM in without alarming their neighbors. If France wants to test its ICBMs it can easily do so by firing them from one end of Polynesia to the other.

How is North Korea planning on testing their ICBM? They are surrounded on all sides by countries that range from wary to hostile. They are not a large country. I guess they could fire the missile about straight up and back down, but that wouldn't test anything. If they fire their missile east over Japan, how are the Japanese going to know that they're not being attacked? I don't understand it.

Even worse is their nuclear program. At some point they are going to have to publicly test a nuclear weapon. All the declared nuclear powers in the world so far, US, UK, France, Russia, China, India and Pakistan, have huge deserts or deserted islands under their control, perfect for exploding bombs in. North Korea, as far as I can tell, does not. If they just wanted to be sure that their nuclear bombs worked the could explode one underground (as is the fashion these days), but then nobody would believe them. They need to do a public test, but they have nowhere to do it. What will they do?