The eccentric Kim Jong Il (or "The Sun of the 21st Century" / "the great leader", as he prefers to call himself) gatecrashed (unwelcomedly, of course) his way into the nuclear club with his long-threatened nuke test today. It is estimated that NK has enough material to make several crude n-bombs... hardly commensurate to its level of economical and general technological development.
The irony of his self-awarded title "the great leader" immediately becomes apparent - and grossly so, when you juxtapose Kim's nuclear ambitions against the poverty and suffering of his starving proletariat - whose welfare he can't be bothered with at all. The morbid irony of the situation (and I say morbid because many North Koreans die each year from starvation brought about by Kim's isolationist and self-marginalising actions) is when you consider North Korea's government's communist fundementals (in spite of their self-declaration DPRK - since when can their word be trusted?) - this is a hardly equal distribution (and in fact a waste) of wealth, not that North Korea's motto of a "prosperous and great country" (강성대국) has much truth in it (let's exclude them counterfeit greenbacks).
Kim's actions are probably suicidal, or at best, masochistic. His long game (not that commiting suicide and bringing 23million poor people down with you is a trivial game) of brinkmanship (from isolationism to NPT to taepodong to nukes) has never served to make him much allies, or friends, or trade partners, except china, who is friendly to NK, but grudgingly so. At best, most countries dole out humananitarian aid to the oppressed and starving under Kim's authoritarian government - but this risks Kim diverting these funds to his nuclear effort.
This brinkmanship is ultimately unsustainable in the long run. His nuclear pursuit doesn't come cheap - from paying pakistani scientists for help and exported technology to refining the uranium/plutonium, there is no doubt nukes cost a bomb. This a drain on NK's stagnant medival economy - and like a tree slowly rotting away, or a upside-down pyramid, there is no doubt Kim's regime will one day collapse. There is a limit to how much starvation the people can take before revolting or dying en masse if Kim's iron hand makes any revolt impossible. Of these, the former is the more optismistic - but however optismistic, it will take far too long and cost far too much, in terms of actual lives and wasted generations.
Kim's brinkmanship has so far been calculated to drive wedges between other countries, especially between China (communist) & South Korea (any instability north of the DMZ will affect it very adversely) and Japan & US (both of which really hate N Korea). But this might be the last straw that tips the balance - it's now up to these countries to take harder measures against Kim and bring him back to the territory of sanity. Soft measures have proven not to work. It's time to take the hard ones.
A peaceful agreement or disarmament pact with NK, while at the same time joint-development of NK's economy would be the utopian solution. But i can say with much certainty that it is a mere strand of hope that won't materialise. NK is indeed a tricky mess for the world to clear up. Doing nothing is not an option. Sanctions and even more isolation will just make kim more rebellious and defiant. A localised strike on Kim's nuclear factories will is a receipe for disaster: remember nuclear fallout? Full-scale military action, on the other hand, is pretty undesirable. Not that it will take much for kim to capitulate, but that the risk of a nuclear reaction (pun intended - remember mutually assured destruction? ) and the destabilisation of the Korean peninsula, including possible harm to S Korea's economy, is way too high. The cost is also high - in terms of both lives and money. But if this proves really necessary, the temptation to impose democracy with a magic wand ("ta-da" and it's done) with insufficient follow through must be resisted. Just look at Iraq and what a terrible screw-up it's been. People who have been living in a dictatorship all their lives can't just adapt to democratic reform instantly.
Kim Jong Il is a heartless lunatic, corrupted by the absolute power he inherited. It is the duty of the other nuclear states to remove him and his nuclear ambition and the threat he poses. Let the oppresed north korean proletariat escape the clutches of this tyrant, and have an existence of greater value and dignity than mere props for Kim's insanity. Let the malnourished north korean babies grow up on more than force-fed propaganda and scraps, with hope of a future. The cost of failure is the continued suffering of NK's 23 million people - people with the capacity to feel pain, not merely a statistic, i must stress.
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