The CIA's new plan could also signal Washington's desire to keep up the pressure on the Communist regime in spite of the results of South Korea's special presidential election following the impeachment of right-wing President Park Geun Hye. Park had taken a hard-line stance on North Korea and was a proponent of increased military and security cooperation with the Untied States. By comparison, South Korea's new president Moon Jae In, head of South Korea's center-left Democratic Party, has said his country needs to be able to "say no" to its powerful American allies and has openly discussed the possibility of visiting Pyongyang for talks with the North Korean regime.

It’s not clear how this new entity will differ from the Agency’s existing operations regarding North Korea. The idea that there wasn't already a unit specializing in the insular country is difficult to believe. The newly created group could reflect President Donald Trump’s administration’s attempts to apply additional pressure on authorities in Pyongyang. The rare public announcement followed months of increasingly tough rhetoric by President Donald Trump’s administration and similar responses from North Korean officials, which The War Zone has been actively following. With regards to North Korea, the “era of strategic patience is over,” Vice President Mike Pence said on April 17, 2017 , during a surprise visit to the Demilitarized Zone. “We want to see North Korea abandon its reckless path of the development of nuclear weapons, and also its continual use and testing of ballistic missiles is unacceptable.”

The notice did not say where CIA would situate the new unit, though the group could definitely perform its functions from within the Agency’s campus at Langley, Virginia, while still coordinating with other U.S. and foreign intelligence and security organizations. It is possible that some or all of the staff could be permanently situated at other locations at home and abroad, including within the CIA’s stations throughout Northeast Asia.

Of course, the desire for renewed or increased attention on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs is hardly surprising. The CIA new initiative comes less than a month after Pyongyang’s annual Day of the Sun military parade. The holiday as a whole revolves around the cult of personality of North Korea’s first leader, Kim Il Sung, and celebrates the day of his birth, April 15. The elder Kim died in 1994.

Among other things, the event has become an opportunity for the authoritarian regime to showcase its latest military achievements. Though it featured other systems, the 2017 parade was a missile bonanza, with a host of never before seen designs rolling through the country’s capital. It is very likely that some of these, including what appeared to be two different types of containerized intercontinental ballistic missiles, were only mockups.

North Korea followed up the public display with a missile launch from the country’s naval base at Sinpo on the East Sea. An apparent failure, the unidentified missile reportedly exploded shortly after launch. Another test at Pukchang airfield, near the country’s western coast, reportedly failed on April 28, 2017. Satellite imagery suggested Pyongyang would also conduct a sixth underground test of a nuclear weapon, though there was no evidence this had occurred by the end of April.

Regardless of these failures to perform, it’s important to note that experimentation of any kind can provide valuable information. As The War Zone’s own Tyler Rogoway pointed out in a detailed analysis of the events in April 2017, Pyongyang’s weaponeers could have learned new lessons from these tests and may have even command detonated the missiles intentionally to prevent them from inadvertently crossing into international territory and being shot down or otherwise falling onto an undesirable location within the country itself. There is also the fact that South Korea routinely searches for the remains of rockets after these tests to gather its own intelligence, a situation North Korea could be looking to avoid.

The CIA could use its resources to spy on North Korea’s conventional military developments and deployments, as well as political intrigue and other illicit activities, too. In April 2017, to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army, North Korea put on a massive display of traditional firepower, involving hundreds of artillery pieces – including dozens of its 170mm Koksan self-propelled guns – and submarines. In February 2017, Kim Yong Nam, half brother of North Korea’s current leader Kim Jong Un, died in what appeared to be a state-sponsored assassination in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport. And then there’s matter of the extensive networks Pyongyang uses to evade international sanctions.