North Korea is rattling sabres at the US by conducting ballistic missile tests and describing them as partly tests for satellite launches and also now as preparation for attacks on the USA. Recent UN resolutions to tighten sanction in light of the recent rocket tests have included their primary ally China who are suggesting that it is not the time to make threats. The history of the North/South Korean war and partitioning remains the bitter theme in the heart of the North Korean regime.
North Korea has demonstrated its prowess in technology but is still an infant when it comes to diplomacy. A military regime that basically starves its people into military service appears to operate as a cult of personality around its anointed despotic family.
They are many miles ahead of Iran in the atomic game. Their direct threats to the USA appear to make little sense now, 21st century political thinking would suggest that amalgamation of North and South under a common government could do so much for the Korean people. It seems very simple from the outside but it obviously is not. North Korea a state with aims to invade as nakedly obvious as it is, it does not have the resources to attack America effectively. But it does have a terrible bargaining advantage if it were to try to invade South Korea with nuclear menace. It it were to show itself to be such a malign power with its huge army, it would become a threat to China, Russia and Japan as well as the US.
North Korea must return to the negotiating table and grow up into the 21st century. Then again it would be good if all the other nuclear armed countries did the same.