Politics Korea

Editor's note: Benjamin Habib is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Habib is an internationally published scholar with research andteaching interests including the political economy of North Korea's nuclear program, East Asian security, international politics of climate change.
Melbourne (CNN) -- The curious timing of NorthKorea's Unha-3 rocket launch, outside of its usual spring-summer launch window, raises questions about the political motivations behind Pyongyang's attention-grabbing move.
On Wednesday morning, just before 10a.m. local time, South Korean news agency Yonhap and the Japanese government reported that the rocket had been launched. It came just days after North Korea extended the launch window due totechnical issues.
Read more: North Korea rocket breaks up in flight
Taking heed of launch and the usual caveats about reading North Korean government behavior, we can discern three motives underlyingPyongyang's latest move: international bargaining, domestic legitimacy and strategic leverage.

Benjamin Habib
This year, Northeast Asia is experiencing a unique convergence of elections and leadershiptransitions in the United States, China, Japan and South Korea. This follows the change of leadership in North Korea in December 2011.
Read more: Photos of North Korea's newest rocket
With BarackObama's re-election in Washington and Xi Jinping named as the new Chinese President, the region awaits the outcomes of the Japanese election on December 16 and the South Korean presidential poll onDecember 19. Proliferation-related negotiating activity is on hold, leaving a diplomatic vacuum until the new governments are settled.
While North Korea appears to have no intention of relinquishing itsnuclear or missile capabilities, its habitual tactic of engineering crises to leverage aid from the international community in exchange for de-escalation or proliferation freeze agreements is...