North Korea built a nuclear weapon because they're acting rationally. Nuclear weapons provide them legitimacy and bargaining power, both domestically and internationally. It's the same reason Iran wants a nuclear deterrent, or anybody else for the matter, like the U.S., China, Russia, or perhaps most similar of all, Pakistan. When you have the bomb, other powers tend to tiptoe around you.
The real threat from North Korean nuclear weapons (other than empowering North Korea geopolitically) is in proliferation. And that's probably one (albeit minor) reason everybody tends to look away when they skirt the embargo.
After reading through these, I am comfortable in sweeping aside your argument. Time and time again, North Korea claimed it was pursuing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. In every negotiation they stalled for more time, more money and more food, until one day when they tested their first bomb. Sure, that one fizzled out, but it wasn't that long until they tested another another, which worked, and that was followed by another. With each test they have grown in capability, and now they openly admit that their reactors are operating to build nuclear weapons.
North Korea is widely acknowledged to be one of the world's poorest, most isolated and backward countries. If they can get the bomb, Iran can do it too, and faster.
If anyone wonders why the North Korean are obsessed with nuclear weapons: it's our own fault (USA).
During the Korean war, when ceasefire negotiations were straggling, both the US and N. Koreans came to the table expecting the other to surrender. During this time, it was suggested to Truman that the US threaten the use of the atomic bomb to coerce them into a peace treaty. Already having nuked Japan in WW2, Truman did not want to issue that threat. It wasn't until his successor, Eisenhower, came to power that the US threatened the use of the atomic bomb, and the N. Koreans begrudgingly agreed to an armstice.
Thus, the nuclear weapon is their symbol of the ultimate power of the bully, and a way to guarantee their freedom and independence.
They also spend tons of money developing more conventional weapons that are decades behind the rest of the 3rd-world arms market.
>I was under the impression that the attraction of nuclear weapons is that they can help reduce total defence spending. They act as a strong deterrent to any country considering an invasion thus allowing NK to reduce the size of its standing army as well as spending on traditional weaponry and military hardware.
The North Korean leadership isn't capable of decisions like this based on mature, rational thought. More likely, they spend the money on nukes because we told them they can't have any, and no one tells the Kims no.
As an example of their immature behavior, there was a guy in charge of their agricultural department who built a series of farms that produced record harvests when Kim Jong Il was still around. Kim then demanded that they cut down large swaths of forests in the surrounding area and turn everything into farms, to replicate the successes. The next time they had a Tsunami, the deforestation caused all of the farms to flood and be destroyed. An estimated 2 million people died of starvation as a result.
The Kims are just spoiled children that play with lives instead of toys.
The idea of NK dropping a nuke anywhere is just utter non-sense. It's obvious that all the threats, from both sides, are nothing more than sabre rattling and when you look at the actual actions of nations the US has done really terrible things, while NK has done very little, yet everyone seems to be OK with the US having thousands of nukes under the control of a psycho leader, but can't handle the idea of NK having some nukes to protect themselves.
It's worse than that--NK didn't "build a nuclear arsenal." They were GIVEN a nuclear arsenal. Let that sink in.
Who wanted to be nuclear armed in order to blackmail the whole world? I know it sounds like a Bond film plot, but I think we'll eventually find out how it really came to be that NK got the bomb rather abruptly and where that tech and know-how originated. It wasn't from China, either.
It's called proof by contradiction. I thought it was self evident that Kim Jong-un wouldn't listen to reason once he had nukes, but perhaps you know better.
No, I get why SK would want them; my question is about the US giving them nukes - more specifically, why would anyone believe that those nukes, even if the US did put them in SK, could actually be fired by the Koreans independently.
I don't think the US can convince anyone that they would really unconditionally give nukes to SK to do whatever they wanted with them.
What's interesting is that "nuclearization" was forced upon them by outside actors. NK was freed from this outside influence and is suddenly now able to come out of the cold.
You misrepresent the facts. NK does not attempt developing a nuclear weapon until the end of the cold war and it had access to plutonium at the time of the first nuclear deals in the nineties.
I could easily see an authoritarian country like NK doing something like this as a weapon of last resort to be used like nukes but obtained much more easily .
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