The situation on the Korean Peninsula continued to deteriorate in 2016. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) held the Seventh Congress of the Workers' Party in which the parallel route of "economy and nuclear weapons" was reiterated. With the big push to develop its nuclear program, North Korea's strategic goal of "breaking through to possess nuclear weapons" is much closer to be realized. The UN Security Council has passed two resolutions consecutively and imposed unprecedented sanctions against DPRK, sinking the country into a more dreadful hole. South Koreans believe that the nuclear weapons of DPRK pose an existential threat, so they adjusted policies and completely severed South-North economic cooperation to pressure North Korea. The decision to deploy THAAD in the Republic of Korea (ROK), made by both the United States and South Korea, threatens China's strategic security and drops Sino-ROK relations to the lowest point. ROK's political upheaval and the final collapse of the Park Geun-hye government further increased uncertainty on the Peninsula. US review of the nuclear capability of the DPRK has changed to acknowledging that the North Korean nuclear weapons are a real threat to the US. Therefore, the US gave up the policy of "strategic patience" for economic, financial, diplomatic and military multilevel isolation and pressure. The US is assembling strategic forces to the Korean Peninsula and preparing for the final military showdown. China's reasonable proposal to solve the crisis was not positively responded by the related countries, which indicated that the situation on the Korean Peninsula would not be calm in 2017.