Rattle wrote:

Kim refuses abandon the "songun" policy, which basically translates to "military-first", and means that not only does the military get first priority on all resources, aid or otherwise, but that the military is also the primary priority of all state based development efforts.

He can't. There isn't enough stuff to go around in NK, so the people who are good at killing people are first in line. This keeps them happy, which keeps him in power. If he formally announced a change in this policy he would be dead before you can go through a bottle of Soju. The militarism is not negotiable. The socialism is. You cannot make a nonnegotialble point a prerequisit for proceeding. You have to start building industry in there and transforming the economy. Once the economy sucks less there will be less pressure for militarism. You have to boil the frogs here. Its delicate, but its not impossible.

I'm not completely against bi-lateral talks with North Korea, but I seriously doubt they will achieve anything. It will just give them a chance to storm out of the talks, like they do almost all talks. Have there actually been any talks that the North Koreans didn't storm out of, that actually produced a resolution they followed? It's become quite rewarding behavior for them.. They keep getting away with it.

AFAIK, you are either talking, or bombing. What does this standoff accomplish? What do you suggest?

RE: The reason NK made a bomb...