Just like the USA and its allies blackmail the world into letting them keep WMD and nobody else.

Because it works for the Son Of A Bush.

Sure thing pal. We'll see how you'd feel about American Imperialism when your European goods are raided by pirates. ARRR!
I'm seriously not joking

Brady, you seem to forget about Consumerism. And Corporations running everything. Sitting in their warm offices, looking all Coporationy. :(

I hate corporations! How dare they make money! >=(

Yeah, they're obviously responsible for all the evils in the world. If only there was a country willing to get rid of those greedy capitalist dogs and enact an economic policy based on self-reliance, it'd probably turn into a paradise, no less!

Oh...

I don't think Bush should be excused for his behaviour just because America is generally a good country.

Nobody's really excusing anything, I think you're just drawing straws at problems that don't exist.

I'm no fan of el presidente, but that's all sort of irrelevant when Kim thinks he can blackmail us into compliance with his own firecracker.

And how's that different to what the U.S. does to Iran, might I ask?
There's no good sides here, just a clash of powers. Your view on this might be slightly biased because you live in the U.S., and thus your patriotism takes over.

It's either our patriotism, or our survival instinct. You be the judge.

I dunno, how is that different? Or do you forget that Iran is headed by Militant Islamists and has a force of over 8 million suicide troops? The reason we supported Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war was because the Iranians might have won, and were posed to march all over the Middle East.

Even calling this a clash of powers, though, is laughable, since North Korea has no real power. We don't even need troops in South Korea anymore. They have a standing army of 700,000 with modern weapons and equipment, 5 million reservists, and a defense budget that's equal to the total national product of their northern neighbors. Compare that to North Korea's 1 million strong army which uses outdated Soviet hardware, is malnourished, has no air power, and is spread across the entirety of North Korea to keep refugees in, protect sea landing zones, fend off air cav, put down possible coups, and garrison the DMZ.

A nuke is the only way the North Koreans will ever acquire any semblance of power, and I think it's Kim Jong's bid to blackmail the US into non-interference, and cow the South Koreans into unification. It could work. Probably won't.

A lot of people say that Bush's inept diplomacy is the cause for Kim even trying to strike US interests with an atomic weapon, but North Korea isn't worth invading. As I said before, it offers no military threat, has no resources, no industry, no economy, nothing worth seizing or destroying. It's basically a giant hole in the ground that nobody wants to touch.

That's mostly true. I'm not sure about the whole "keep the US out and force the unification of Korea" thing, though. If anything, the reason Kim wants a nuke is to be able to make sure no one's actually going to invade so he can keep watching porn and drink expensive booze. He might also want to use it as a way to bargain external aid when too many of his people are starving or if he happens to need something else. The worst he might do, for the outside world, is sell nuclear devices in exchange for hard currency, something they already do with ballistic missiles. That could be a problem.

As for saying it has nothing worth seizing or destroying, it might not be entirely true either. There are a few facilities which could prove dangerous in the long run, mostly related to nuclear research. The Yongbyon complex is at the top of the list. Even if North Korea fails in making a bomb, they still have the ability to extract plutonium. In fact, the so-called "Radiochemistry Laboratory" at Yongbyon can reprocess 100KG of plutonium annually, and I'm sure a number of other states would be extremely interested in by-passing what is essentially the hardest thing to conceal when attempting to build an implosion device.

Links to my sources:
Info on the Yongbyon Radiochemistry lab
Useful clickable map of the Yongbyon complex
Various WMD related maps of North Korea
Note that some entries aren't entirely up to date.

Great. Then we bring Kim to the table, tell him that he needs to back down from his missile and nuke program or we'll destroy what little facilities he has. If he tries nuking Japan or shelling Seoul, then it'll be the South Koreans that force re-unification.