[krapp]

>Who's helping them and what's their objective?

Who's helping them is obvious - China.

What's their objective? Destabilizing and undermining American military hegemony in their sphere of influence and establishing themselves as Asia's sole superpower. I don't know how North Korea works into that, though. Maybe China just wants a proxy to harass the US with while having politically plausible deniability. Maybe they're hoping to step in when NK takes it too far and look like heroes, while making the US look feckless and weak.

[nodesocket]

Seems if you say anything negative about China even if completely accurate on HN you get downvoted. Yes China has assisted NK:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-sold-trucks-us...

[JohnTHaller]

It's relatively common on most social media sites including HN, reddit, etc. It was particularly noticeable during the coverage of China's DDoS attack on github a few years back.

[tim333]

Alternatively they may have got engines from Ukraine https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-mi...

[hotroastedpep]

> look like heroes

No one is gonna fall for that. Especially since most of its neighbors are aware of China's belligerence, and are hostile to China (India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia) or are skeptics of China (Australia, New Zealand)