Wondering What Is Happening in North Korea? Here's Your Cheat Sheet.

A timeline of the latest escalations

The drumbeat for war in the Korean Peninsula is slow, fear inducing, and uncertain. While the North provokes the South with nuclear tests and declarations of war, it's hard to know what will come of it all, as cycles of tension and then descalation are common between the two countries. As Jack Shafer at Reuters puts it:"Like riding a corkscrew through history, North Korea does everything it does over and over again." Consequentially, it can be hard to follow news developments in the region.

We are again in the middle of a North Korea, South Korea tension-esclation cycle. Here's a concise timeline of how tensions have mounted between the ever-contentious twin nations.