It's a common mistake to confuse possession of nuclear weapons with being a superpower. Nuclear technologies are becoming more and more commoditized, and proliferation efforts seem to be struggling with this fact. Humanity may soon end up with 2x countries with nuclear weapons. However, this would not mean that there would be 2x superpowers, or even just powers. Look at the DPRK or Pakistan, how powerful are they?
Discussion
North Korea has performed quite well in the war against the UN.
Has it?
Yes, and if this keeps up, the DPRK will outlive the UN.
No it hasn't, it ended up as a shithole that survives on foreign aid, all their militaristic chestbeating is just to get some aid in exchange for calming down, it's literally like a child in the mall screaming to get a lollipop
this is a propaganda-fed oversimplified childish view of the situation
sadly it's not far from what most us politicians think
Then what is the "real" situation?
Assessing economic developments in North Korea is extremely difficult. The country has not published any regular national account statistics since the 1960s or any budget information since the early 1980s. Almost all the Korean, English, French, and German literature on the matter is extremely anti DPRK biased (for obvious reasons). I'd send you a Chinese paper but you can't read Chinese. Here is one of the less biased, recent, English pieces as a starting point. In it you'll find a more vibrant economy than you want to believe:
here's a start:
Well, presumably their welfare is at the level of Cambodia.
I'm not talking about nukes. I'm talking about rate of production of artillery, hypersonic missiles, submarine weapons, anti-satellite technology, etc. Russia has been on a war footing for longer while the West just fed their old weaponry to Ukraine not feeling an immediate pressure to ramp up production in preparation for a world war.
You westerns overestimate russian industrial complex and its pity state. The reality is that it's kind of a walking dead. The real issue is nukes, that is the only thing that prevents Russia from being fucked really hard.