Wear us down with false threats while we yawn and say "yeah ok whatever" and then they actually pull something off.

They don't have the money for that.

Remember when Kim Jong Un declared all-out war on South-Korea a few years ago?

What? You don't?

Maybe you forgot because NK did precisely nothing after declaring war.



NK has a huge conventional army, but the equipment is about 40-50 years old. They would be up against SK's border-defences and SK's much more modern army.
(How hard would it really be for SK to put 1000 robotic machine-gun turrets on its borders?)

NK's only chance to attack SK would be to conquer it in one lightning-fast attack and take the whole population hostage before anybody can react. If they get bogged down in artillery-duels or throw nuclear bombs, the gloves are off. China will remove its protective hand from NK and the rest of the world will blow the infrastructure of Pyongyang to smithereens. Because Pyongyang is effectively the only notable place in NK. Once the electricity and telephones go down, NK is down. Good luck with keeping up your dictatorship when nobody can hear your orders.

But what if it's all a ruse?

That's all I'm saying. I mean, satellite photos showing how much of their nation has electricity at night is a pretty good indication of how bad things are there but ya know.

Everyone else is basically starving.

To China, NK is that embarassing cousin you don't like, but hey, he's family. You are in theory supposed to be on his side.

But China's geopolitical strategy is to use money, to secure ressources in non-military ways (-> Africa) and to put itself into a militarily favorable position without engaging anyone militarily (-> building islands in the Pacific).
A war right on its doorstep would ruin China's strategy of peaceful domination. China would not support NK in a war. They would call for peace, but they would not join the fray on NK's side.
Example: ISIS has killed 3 chinese citizens. President Jinping has promised bloody retaliation. But China still isn't doing anything...




What could NK possibly do AND win?

Conquer SK? Takes too long, costs too many military ressources, costs too much economic ressources.

Hold another country hostage by threatening a nuclear attack? Maybe in a post-apocalyptic world where everybody who could reign in on NK is busy.

Piss off the right people?

It's probably true.

A delivery system the size of a small ship, however, is probably required.

I've stood next to some of the fusion bombs the US made circa 1960s and they weighed easily a ton and were several meters long.

The very very first ones were the size of a bus.

and the dignity of the nation" - not so much on food for the people who actually constitute the nation of North Korea.

NK-propaganda contains a religious component. The Kim-family has co-opted an old korean myth and claims that Kim Yong Il was born in a hut, beside a lake, while a crane was flying over it yaddayaddayadda... just like some supernatural hero is born in that myth.

The Kim-family has effectively installed itself as divinely legitimated nobility in "communist" NK.

They know that their country is in deep shit economically.
They know that they can't stay in power AND do the massive changes needed.
They are waiting... waiting that sometime something will happen that will make their situation better.
And in the mean-time they are rulers of a broken country and defend it with outlandish threats.

I was under the assumption that it was all bear skins and bone knives there.

H-Bomb? It is not even possible to build an A-Bomb without the world knowing about it. NK has neither, no matter how loud they rattle their stone sabers. Plus, their rockets all blow up.

They come out with this stuff whenever they want attention.

The ISIL terrorists have been getting all the press lately.

They are so funny.

Interesting choice of words.

Live awful lives and no one cares. They have nothing.

I wish there was someway to help them. There's no food. There's no power. They have nothing because their government uses everything up for the military and a few people at the top.

By Ben Carson?

The world would be better off w/out either of these ass clowns.

BTW did you see this? D. Trump's civil war marker on his golf course ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/us/politics/in-renovation-of-golf-club-donald-trump-also-dressed-up-history.html?_r=0

this lie alone should have sunk his run for POTUS but our "liberal media" made the trump=monster
and now they don't know what to do w/him.

a WWII gravity bomb.

Everyone in the control room says "uh oh", ducking right before they blow themselves up.