North Korea's recent launch WAS intercontinental by virtue of it reaching appx 1,000-mile apogee (height, elevation). That 1,000-mile height translates into many thousands of miles laterally. 
NASA Engineer, Retired

 

Eoin Treacy's view

Thank you for this confirmation. Empathy is a useful tool in both looking at how markets might respond to different situations but also to geopolitics. I wonder at what the fly on the wall must hear at National Security briefings in the White House. 

North Korea has nuclear weapons and an ICBM, it is debatable whether Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been blunted, meanwhile China is growing increasingly strident about its border claims both in the South China Sea and with India, while cyberwarfare tools developed by the NSA have been leaked into the general hacking community with the number of civilian targets proliferating by the day.

Since we live in a multi-polar world where the USA’s ally Israel, China’s proxy North Korea and Russia’s ally Iran either have or are developing nuclear weapons then it is reasonable to expect the number of nuclear-armed countries to continue to increase considering the considerable deterrent they offer from invasion. While the situation is growing increasingly taut, there is no evidence the markets believe there is credible threat of open aggression. This article by Noah Feldman does a good job of explaining the status quo and how difficult it will be to change. 

South Korea’s stock market for example might be overbought in the short-term but shows little sign that anyone expects there to be an imminent change to the status quo.  Meanwhile Samsung Electronics could be on track to make a larger profit than Apple this year. 

That doesn’t mean the potential for conflict is completely obviated but it is does put it in the category of a surprise if it were to occur.