Say you’re a ruthless narcissist and a natural-born dictator, and you’re reviewing footage of this month’s presidential debate in Philadelphia. It’s obvious that you got far too little time during the sparring, and inspired not nearly as much fear and awe as are your due. So you decide to spring your “October surprise”.

I’m not talking about former and perhaps future US president Donald Trump, but about North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. All sorts of topics are hogging the news cycles in this election season – the Middle East, for example, where war is now being waged with exploding pagers. But Kim isn’t one of them, even though he’s one of the biggest threats to the United States and world peace. He may feel that a reminder is in order. What could that look like?

Bloomberg Opinion