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SEOUL, South Korea — For 20 years, fears about North Korea’s headlong pursuit of nuclear bombs have been watered down with smirking admonishments not to overestimate an impoverished dictatorship prone to bragging and tantrums.

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Few are laughing now.

After three nuclear tests of apparently increasing power and a long-range rocket launch that puts it a big step closer to having a missile that can carry a nuclear warhead to American shores, many believe that in a matter of years — as little as five, maybe, though the timeframe is a point of debate — Pyongyang will have a very scary nuclear arsenal.

Though it’s a view not embraced by everyone, one respected South Korean expert says North Korea could be working toward 80 to 100 nuclear-tipped missiles. Bruce Klingner, a former U.S. intelligence officer specializing in North Korea, provides a less dramatic but still bracing assessment: If the path is A to Z, with Z being nuclear missiles that can hit the U.S. mainland, North Korea is maybe at T.

Proof of the new seriousness with which Pyongyang’s intentions are now seen can be found in the Obama administration’s announcement in March that it will spend US$1-billion to add 14 interceptors to the U.S.-based missile defence system. It said it was responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.