North Korea Promises A Christmas Surprise. Here Are The Options

North Korea doesn't really do Christmas cards, but if it did, its card would probably have a picture of the nation's leader, Kim Jong Un, riding a white horse through a snowy wilderness. In fact, North Korean state media released those exact images this month, and the message was clear: Kim, frustrated with how things were going, was pondering a new direction.

"The idea is that he was making this journey to commune with the universe in order to settle on his course," says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who tracks North Korea.