A lot can be learned from a cursory glance at the propaganda art that North Korean authorities choose to display across the country and disseminate through official media.

When tensions are high, posters across the DPRK often reflect this: side-street propaganda seen in winter this year and late last year boasted that the “entire U.S. mainland is in our range!” and hailed the coming “great and decisive war against America.”

So with July seeing Pyongyang refrain from its usual anti-U.S. invective on a key anniversary and reports from earlier in the year suggesting