Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
This problem existed long before the North Koreans got nukes. It's been going on for decades.

"This round" doesn't really go to the north, or the south, or to anyone. What has changed? The south is still rich and the north is still poor. The north is still nasty and the south is still nice. Everybody still wishes the regime in the north will collapse but nobody's willing to start a war to make it happen. When the winter comes the north will try to bargain off part of the nuclear program for food and fuel. They may or may not get it. The Chinese will continue to give the north just enough aid to keep them existing and useful but not enough to let them be really viable.

I don't see it changing until the regime in the north falls from the inside, which could take a while.
Indeed. The weaker North does play his games of aggression thinking and hoping that he can rely on the understandable unwillingness of the stronger South to go to war.

Over the last thirty years the power disadvantages of the North have only grown, possibly with one exception, nuclear power. Their desperate attempts to get functional nuclear missiles shows just how weak they are in pretty much all the other areas.