The North Koreans are going ballistic again — this time not with missiles but with rhetoric. 

No sooner had the South Koreans announced what they called a “tabletop exercise” with the Americans next Wednesday than the North’s foreign ministry came out with a threat of “unprecedentedly persistent and strong counteractions.”

Let’s be clear about the meaning of “tabletop.” It’s a game played on elaborate computers, good guys working together against bad guys — in this case at the Pentagon — to make sure they’ve got their signals straight. The purpose will be to improve on “extended deterrence,” the South’s defense ministry said, with emphasis presumably on the tactical nukes that North Korea threatens to use against nearby targets in South Korea and Japan.

North Korea extended the rhetoric to include whatever joint exercises the Americans and South Koreans have in mind, including war games in March. The statement also accused Washington of attempting to turn the UN Security Council “into a tool for the U.S. illegal hostile policy toward the DPRK,” referencing the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The U.S. illegal hostile policy toward the DPRK has gone to the extremes,” it said, and “cannot be allowed any longer.” Indeed, “If it is the U.S. option to show its muscle and counter everything with muscle, the same is true of the DPRK’s option,” the statement said, warning against “preparations for an aggression war.”

The North Koreans are in such dire straits economically, though, that it’s questionable whether they could go much beyond loud talk and maybe carefully planned incidents near the North-South line.

Leader Kim Jong-un has ordered a politburo meeting to talk about a crisis that threatens a famine similar to that of the 1990s that killed as many as two million people. Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency called it “a very important and urgent task to establish the correct strategy for the development of agriculture and take relevant measures for the immediate farming.”

North Korea’s economic problems have increased while imports from China have largely dried up during the more than three years since the onset of the Covid pandemic. North Korea relies on China for half its food and almost all the oil needed to fuel its dilapidated economy.

In addition to deep economic problems, pressure from China may explain why the North has not conducted its widely expected seventh underground nuclear test. The North last tested a nuke in September 2017.

Nor has the North tested a missile since January 1 after having tested nearly 100 last year. The latest statement from Pyongyang, though, suggests the North may resume missile testing while South Korean and American forces stage military exercises that have been encouraged by the South’s conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol.