The fall of the Soviet Union took the DPRK's (and many of the AES's) biggest trading partner off the table. Lead to famine and all sorts of resource issues. If I remember correctly, DPRK was actually better off than the South for a while there.

AFAIK the North completely overhauled their food production in the 90s which is why the loss of trade with China during COVID didn't trigger a famine - but they definitely lost a bunch of variety in their diets for that time which understandably caused problems. The energy problems though are on par with any other industrialized-but-poor nation, something that the DPRK has gotten better at dealing with but really can't solve under present conditions.

(as an aside the North's commitment to being food self-reliant is also one of the reasons their economic recovery in the 2000s was so slow - growing food in the North is really difficult and inefficient, which is why traditionally they've relied on food imports, but when that was no longer an option they had to dedicate a ton of labor and resources to doing it anyway which cannibalized labor and resources that were previously being used for heavy industry)

Just talking out my butt, but I imagine a shift in priority. Every documentary I've seen of people in the DPRK they talk about their hope for reunification because so many have family on the other side. With the US ramping up shitfest levels across the globe I can see how there could be a need to shift priorities and stance towards trying to seem as big and dangerous as possible. It's not as if the western world is responding to peaceful overtures anyway.

My take is that the DPRK has wanted to normalize relations with the rest of the world ever since the Korean War ended, but their hard line stance on reunification was and remains a stumbling block on establishing a proper peace treaty and changing those relations. Previously that's a price they've simply paid - but now they have two factors that I can see that are pushing them to try something new. The first one is the post-COVID economic crash: the DPRK's economy was slow to grow already and the loss of what trade they had with China and Russia made things worse, so opening up relations with other countries looks more valuable than it did before.

The second is America's slipping hegemony: the DPRK's economy would be massively boosted if they could get some of that Belt and Road investment, become a member of BRICs, trade with China using their own currency, or any of the other things that have become possible in the past couple of years in the international community, but as long as they can't get over that first hurdle of signing a peace deal with the South those doors will remain closed to them.

I'm sure there are internal factors too. The media portrays the Kim family as though they're the sole directors of policy in the country but they've got a head of government and a head of state and factions within the worker's party and all of those other things that other countries have to deal with. It could be that COVID was just the last straw and now there is a demand within the WPK to try something different, and this is the result - but without reliable reporting on the DPRK's internal politics this is all speculation on my part.

Without DRM: https://player.fm/series/blowback/s3-episode-1-stop-me-before-i-kill-again

Just the mp3: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/1dadc53c-b939-4bfb-b0d8-fa4f6e2188fd/stream.mp3

Nothing but satellite images but this seems to back it up. https://news.sky.com/story/north-korea-reportedly-tears-down-monument-to-peace-and-reunification-with-south-korea-13055223

the north would wait until revolutionary conditions, which is easily in south korea's future with its acute capitalist dystopia.