North Korea wants to be an attention whore again...

Depending on whether you ask the South Koreans or the Russians, it's anywhere between the Diebner Atomic Bomb and Little Boy.

This is a nuclear program decades, if not centuries away from being any kind of real threat, given the resources at North Korea's disposal. If push comes to shove, the United States can play Nuclear Hardball and the North Koreans will have to back down, unless Kim Jong really is that crazy.

North Korea can't realistically retaliate in any way without being crushed by South Korea, and we can initiate hostilities whenever we want so long as the Bush Administration is in office (is Kim hoping for a Democratic Congress?). We should be flexing our muscles at this point, and all we're doing is making a lot of ifs and "We don't know what's happened." I mean, Christ, we already have a bloated American presence in South Korea, does it really need to just sit there pissing them off?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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which in turn likely depends on the rate at which they can extract plutonium and, to a lesser degree, build the explosive lenses assembly.

Who's to say they aren't using the gun method? The projected yield so far seems to indicate it.

I don't think North Korea selling bombs on the black market is particularly realistic. The reason they made the bombs in the first place was in some ill-fated effort to try and check Western aggression. If North Korea sells their bombs, they're essentially wasting tons of resources, and besides, what kind of bomb could North Korea sell that would actually be marketable?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

A closed state like North Korea has little to fear from external terrorism. What he would have to fear is that his partners would have a hard time keeping the deal on the low.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Then wouldn't having a nuke help him sleep at night? Nuclear weapons aren't like shitty submarines, especially not these party poppers that the North Koreans supposedly have.

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Military invasion is no good because aggressive military actions are no longer "allowed" in our world unless they're for some intangible benefit such as "spreading democracy", which China would have no intention of doing.

Heh. It's China, buddy. They can be as belligerent as they want in regards to North Korea and still maintain good relations with their most important trade partner.

The Chinese could affect a coup by hand-picking a general and making him an offer he can't refuse. The general starts an insurrection, and the Chinese deploy a "peacekeeping" force. Things are done, people are shot, and the DPRK is headed by a new, China-friendly dictator.

Alternatively, if we started playing Nuclear Hardball, China could offer Kim and out, say, Exile, and in return Kim dissolves the DPRK and the Chinese force the remnants to accept a reunification deal favoring the South. We'd have to negotiate with China to accomplish this feat, of course. Which would probably require the end of an American presence on the Korean peninsula indefinately.

The "Democratizing" effect of South Korea wouldn't be any more significant than the Chinese access to media, as censored as it is. The appeal of Democratic nations is that they offer the potential for financial wealth, yet the Party has precariously balanced free market initiatives while maintaining a totalitarian Police State. The Chinese would sooner not rock the boat and have their own car instead of a bullet in the face.

The Party only really has to worry about the rural poor, who have had a nasty history of dissent, and most of them live far enough away from South Korea for any cultural influence.

The biggest thing for the Chinese is that North Korea acts as a buffer against American aggression. Complete removal of US forces from the peninsula is a monkey off the Party's back. So long as we remove the nuclear tripwire from China's "elbow room" they should be fairly compliant with a reunified Korea.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Liquor distillers can just keep selling to rappers.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Nevermind either that the North Korean army uses their Kalashnikovs to till fields in the off-season.

How ya doing, buddy?

It's because they don't actually hate us. Those people watch South Korean television (even though they risk being re-educated), and they understand just how shitty their lives are in comparison.

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