American military and intelligence sources are “tracking North Korea’s actions by the hour” and “bracing for an imminent test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching American shores,” Sanger reported. The crisis was inevitable because, over the past 18 months of sporadic talks between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the “North has bolstered its arsenal of missiles and its stockpile of bomb-ready nuclear material.”

But the Times, as it does frequently in its coverage of these talks, omitted key developments on the Korean Peninsula, including in the South, that have contributed to the current standoff.

Perhaps the most overlooked is the massive military buildup in South Korea over the past two years. On December 9, as tensions were rising once again, the South Korean Air Force released to the media a stunning video recreation of a preemptive attack on the North Korean ballistic missile network that Kim may soon test again.

The four-minute film was first broadcast on JTBC, a major television network. It shows South Korea’s crack pilots—who are heavily supplied with US-made weapons—finding and then pummeling a North Korean ICBM launch site with drones, missiles, heavy bombers, and stealth fighters. Among them are the Global Hawk, the giant surveillance aircraft made by Northrop Grumman, and stealth F-35A attack planes made by Lockheed Martin.