Looking at things from a North Korean perspective

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0905/31/fzgps.01.html

<snip>Welcome, gentlemen.

People sometimes look at what the North Koreans are doing. And they think, these guys are crazy.

Are they crazy? Does it make sense what they have just done?

CHARLES (JACK) PRITCHARD, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO THE DPRK: Well, it certainly doesn't make sense from a Western perspective. But if you take a look at this from a North Korean perspective and understand what's going on behind the scenes, then it begins to look slightly more rational.

We don't accept it, but it's something that we can understand.

SELIG HARRISON, AUTHOR, "KOREAN ENDGAME": First of all, they feel they've been conned by the United States.

We always talk about North Korea being untrustworthy and not living up to agreements. From their point of view, from the point of the view of the hard-liners in North Korea, they agreed, went along with the decision to suspend the North Korean nuclear program.

From October 2004 (Edit by poster. I am sure he meant October 1994) to December 2002, there was no North Korean nuclear weapons program, because the Clinton administration made a deal with them. That was abrogated.

We didn't fulfill our main promise in connection with that, in return for their suspension, which was building two light-water reactors for them. We just couldn't quite get our act together.

Then the moderates say, well, wait. We're going to get Obama now, and everything's going to be OK. Then along comes Obama. And from their point of view, he still is demonizing North Korea. Hillary Clinton, in particular, has been making a whole series of very -- of statements that confirm the North Korean belief that the U.S. is hostile to them, and confirmed the hard-line belief that we might engage in military action against them.

After all, from the point of view of are they being rational, they are surrounded by very powerful U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities.

The only way out is for the West to very quietly rebuild the North Korean economy. Offer them way above market hard money for something they can still export, let them appear to win (save a lot of face), and slide some innocuous requests in as part of the bargain, like more family reunions. Like all venomous animals wedged tightly into their hidey-hole, they can only be coaxed out with the greatest of patience. We all see that Dubya poking the hole with stick for 8 years was a waste of time (or worse), now maybe the no-drama approach will work on them.