This Time, a Less Predictable Pyongyang SEOUL - Things tend to repeat themselves enough in the continuing North Korean missile and nuclear crises that analysts and journalists often joke that if they pulled out their old reports and changed the dates, they could pretty much describe the latest episode. That sense of déjà vu has descended upon the Korean Peninsula in recent weeks. This month, as it did in April 2009, North Korea launched a rocket. As it did in 2009, the U.N. Security Council condemned the launch and called for tighter sanctions. As it did four years ago, North Korea on Tuesday "resolutely and totally" rejected the Council's censure. Now it is widely feared that North Korea will conduct a nuclear test, as it did in 2009. But each time the pattern of provocation, punishment and countermoves replays itself there are some fresh twists, adding an air of volatility to the North Korean crisis. "The main difference between 2009 and now is that, back then, North Korea acted as if it knew exactly what it was doing under Kim Jong-il," said Choi Jin-wook, of the Korea Institute for National Unification, referring to the North Korean leader who died in December, leaving the government to his son Kim Jong-un, whose grip on decision-making in Pyongyang remains to be tested. "This time, we don't see such a strong control tower in evidence in Pyongyang," he said. Pyongyang's recent sequence of decisions struck many outside analysts as baffling, even by North Korean standards. The government first made a deal with Washington in February to suspend long-range missile tests and then went ahead with a rocket launching last week, something it knew was regarded by the Americans as tantamount to a missile launch. It then invited foreign journalists for the launching but ended up not showing it to them. Unlike the case with its last two failed satellite launches, which it insisted were successful, this time it admitted to its people that the rocket failed. "I see confusion in the regime," Mr. Choi said. That makes it more difficult to read North Korea and make the situation more unpredictable. We wonder who Kim Jong-un will listen to following the rocket launch. If he listens to the military, North Korea will probably take a harder line, staging not just a nuclear test but also a military provocation against South Korea. On Wednesday, the North Korean military repeated an often-used threat to attack Seoul, the South Korean capital, in what it called a "holy war" against the "traitor" government of President Lee Myung-bak. Baek Seung-joo, at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, noted that the statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry condemning the Security Council on Tuesday did not explicitly threaten to conduct a nuclear test, nor did it disavow six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. "The rocket failure must have dealt a big blow to the military and it may have lost some of its clout in the regime," Mr. Baek said. Attention is now focused on whether North Korea will conduct a new nuclear test, possibly using fuel from its recently disclosed uranium-enrichment program. "We are going to see the repetition of the same pattern: a missile launch followed by a nuclear test," said Andrei Lankov at Kookmin University in Seoul. What might make a difference is the likely use of highly enriched uranium in the test. If this is uranium, not plutonium, it will make the entire affair far more dangerous from the nonproliferation point of view. In fact, a uranium bomb would make it "clear why they slapped Uncle Sam to the face, by breaking a freshly signed agreement," Mr. Lankov said. "They want to show that stakes will be much higher, so they will demand much more than a paltry 240,000 tons of food aid," he said, referring to the assistance Washington had promised and then suspended over the rocket launch. Lee Yun-keol, a North Korean biologist who defected to the South in 2006, wrote in a book to be published this month that North Korean nuclear physicists are expected to conduct a new nuclear test because developing atomic bomb technology has been officially recognized as "Kim Jong-il's dying wish," as was the rocket program. Mr. Lee, who now leads the North Korea Strategic Information Service Center, a private research organization, said that the late Mr. Kim's "will" was being circulated among the North Korean elite as the guidepost of policy under his son. Kim Jong-un has so far relied heavily on the authority of his father for his rule. "The will says that if North Korea does not develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, it will live as a slave to the big powers," Mr. Lee said, citing unnamed high-placed sources inside North Korea. On Tuesday, North Korea said that it was abandoning its February agreement with the United States, in which it promised to suspend uranium enrichment, nuclear tests and long-range missile tests in exchange for food aid. It said it would continue to launch rockets to try to place satellites into orbit. It also hinted that it may now conduct a long-range missile or nuclear test. Mark C. Toner, a spokesman at the U.S. State Department, called the North Korean announcement "not surprising, given their recent behavior" and warned of tightened enforcement of sanctions. Yet, analysts have long questioned the effectiveness of sanctions against North Korea. Some analysts said Tuesday that China may have violated a U.N. Security Council resolution by providing 16-wheeled missile-launching vehicles that were seen in a military parade in Pyongyang on Sunday carrying a new type of missile. Ted Parsons of IHS Jane's Defense Weekly pointed out similarities to a known Chinese vehicle: "The same windscreen design, the same four windscreen wiper configuration, the same door and handle design, a very similar grill area, almost the same front bumper lighting configuration, and the same design for the cabin steps." James Hardy, also at Jane's Defense Weekly, said that if confirmed, China's involvement would breach a 2009 Security Council resolution that prohibits supplying North Korea with "any arms or related matériel, or providing financial transactions, technical training, services or assistance related to such arms."