I don't see North Korea ever actually launching a nuclear ICBM, regardless of the fear mongering, unless the tensions escalate into direct conflict. And that would be in response to conflict or triggered circumstances rather than an initial attack as a declaration of war.
For all the mania that is North Korea, their minimal, flaky alliances leave them in a suicidally precarious position. Launching an ICBM as an act of war will assuredly disintegrate partnership with China, and the inevitable catastrophic fallout would see the entire region reduced to rubble under the bombardment from US and allied forces. Declaring war via ICBM is dictatorship suicide.
War these days tends to be fought not through direct conflict of nuclear powers but proxy wars and technologically one sided conflicts. We live in a perpetual cold war, and in a deeply interconnected modern world. So the biggest concerns I feel with this situation as it escalates are:
1) North Korea developing and selling off extremely dangerous missile and nuclear technology to smaller ideologically focused groups who may be at war with the US and others, which would be very difficult to track and potentially erode relationships with others.
and 2) Asian regional instability possibly through conflict, if not tension, and the consequences such would have on immigration and global finances and trade.
North Korea has been chest beating faux threats for a long, long time now. And the technological arms race towards nuclear ICBM armament is not remotely new on a global scale, nor shouldn't have been expected from a nation investing in this weaponry, no matter how "crazy" they might seem. But obviously as the tools become more readily available the caution is warranted.
I do feel the world as the way it is just won't escalate into MAD, not yet, and the real risks are more nuanced and backdoor that nuclear war between North Korea and the United States.