Other than that, I have to ask why you're so keen to defend North Korea (or seemingly) after having another discussion with you on the topic.
Because for too many people they are the latest moral panic, a boogeyman to get irrational over. It's just a country, with normal people in it, most of which aren't in that particular situation of their own choice and are just doing what it takes to get by. They have had most of the world pointing guns at them since the birth of the state, and yet at the same time everyone expects them to disarm.
As someone who has gone through the personal equivalent of this, I find it easy to sympathise. I don't support how they run their country, but that's true of a remarkable number of nations these days. I have no trouble separating out my criticism of their national politics from my opinion of how the rest of the world treats them like a red-headed step child.
As far as the threats of military action against them, I don't see the point. NK can have whatever weapons it wants to feel safe from the actual armies that are sitting on it's doorstep, in the full knowledge that using them other than defensively will end in them being wiped off the map. It feels like a prisoner's dilemma, but where the US and allies think that NK is so cowed that they'd never bring both down no matter what the US chooses. The only situation in which NK actually "wins" in any sense by pushing the button is if they think that they can first strike all potential retaliation (which is impossible), or if they've already lost.
Threatening to invade pushes them closer to thinking that they've already lost. If I told you that Kim Jong Un was going to have you assassinated on Sunday, you might well spend the last week of your life trying to make sure that he'd pay for it in some way. Or you might not, but it would hardly be an irrational way to behave.
I don't see myself as defending North Korea, but I do hope that some of my comments can help people look at the situation from another angle. NK is only a credible threat to the US and it's allies if they give it reasons to be. Within their own odd situation, NK is not irrational or stupid. I understand South Korea's fear, the "enemy" is right on their doorstep. But the US antagonism seems unnecessary, and now that the US has largely backed out of Afghanistan and Iraq I wonder if this isn't the next random war that will be started on some pretext that later turns out to be bollocks.
