Despite decades of international efforts using all manner of diplomatic, economic, and pressure tools, North Korea remains an existential threat to South Korea and a security challenge to the alliance. Indeed, Pyongyang has stepped up its efforts in recent years to augment and improve its nuclear and missile threats against South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Through missile launches and parades the regime has revealed over a dozen new nuclear-capable missile systems including multiple-warhead ICBMs, hypersonic missiles, and missiles with maneuverable warheads to evade allied missile defense systems. Pyongyang has also shown new basing systems including train-based launchers and underwater from a lake which further complicate allied tracking and targeting requirements. North Korea has also announced additional weapons that is developing, including a new generation of smaller tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. In September 2022, it announced a new nuclear doctrine which lowered the threshold for its use of nuclear weapons. To address the growing nuclear, missile, and conventional force threat, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan resumed combined military exercises after a four-year hiatus to reverse the degradation in allied deterrence and defense capabilities. Those exercises and additional measures must continue in order to protect territory and people of our three nations. The South Korea-U.S. alliance will also need to address issues -- such as South Korean nuclearization and OPCON transition -- which if not handled well could lead to strains in the bilateral relationship. While all of these factors will require extensive South Korean efforts and attention, Seoul must also concurrently look over the horizon to address the growing Chinese threat to the Indo-Pacific region. Seoul must also consider its involvement in Taiwan contingencies. Through successive administrations, South Korea had sought to stay on the sidelines while Beijing implemented increasingly assertive and belligerent economic and security policies.