North Korea has experienced US brutality. During the Korean War the US bombed Korea for 3 years, wiped out 20% of its population and destroyed every city, village and vital structure. President Truman threatened to bomb them with the atomic bomb, and General Douglas MacArthur planned to use 30 nuclear bombs which were shipped to a US base in Okinawa. Truman fired MacArthur not because MacArthur wanted to use nukes, but because Truman wanted someone more stable to be trusted with them. Truman preauthorized MacArthur's replacement General Matthew Ridgeway to use the nuclear bombs at his discretion. The US public is oblivious to US recklessness with nuclear bombs and is passive about what is done in their name. The Korean War (1950 to 1953) is called the Forgotten War because the US public has amnesia too. Whatever propaganda they do remember is a flawed version of history put out by the US government. Obliviousness, passivity and amnesia are why all US wars of aggression are quickly forgotten as the US moves on to the next one.
After the US military occupation of South Korea from 1945 to 1948 it was then ruled by US backed repressive dictators until 1993, starting with Syngman Rhee. Rhee was a practically unknown in Korea who had lived in the USA from 1912 until 1945 when he was flown back to Korea by the US military. The US pumped billions of dollars into South Korea to make it a showplace of US-style capitalism during the Cold War, but South Korea did not develop under either democracy or a free market, according to Ha-Joon Chang, the author of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
For many decades North Korea outpaced South Korea in economic development and in their standard of living. With the 1991 demise of its most important trading partner the Soviet Union, North Korea fell on hard economic times. Then it suffered two floods and a drought in the 1990's that resulted in famines. On top of that the US has imposed killer economic sanctions. So now US propaganda constantly reinforces the belief that North Korea is an economic failure that cannot even feed its own people. While the US touts that South Korea is an economic miracle of democracy, capitalism and free markets. Little is ever mentioned about the economic collapse of South Korea in 1997, which the US had to rescue with a financial bailout package that reached $90 Billion. The package included IMF loans that came with humiliating conditionalities of austerity. The minister of finance Lim Chang Yuel went on TV, humiliated and begging for the South Korean people's forgiveness.
Despite all the propaganda otherwise, North Korea is not only willing to sit down at the table with the US, but it has long been proposing negotiations to a deaf USA ear. What North Korea says it wants today are the same things that were negotiated with Clinton in the Agreed Framework: security, compensation, and economic relations with the US. There is nothing unreasonable that North Korea is asking for, and that is probably why the US refuses to negotiate. It does not want peace for its own insane naked imperialism reasons. Instead the US wants continued hostilities, otherwise if it wanted peace it would welcome diplomacy.
It is the US that is unpredictable. One day Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says that the US is willing to hold unconditional talks with North Korea. Then he says the US won't. Trump says that he will destroy North Korea with fire and fury, and then he says he would "absolutely talk to North Korea's Kim on the phone". It is the US that is paranoid and finding enemies everywhere: Cuba, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia to name a few. The US enemies list has nothing to do with democracy, freedom and human rights. If it did the US would not be friends, allies, and benefactors to brutal kingdoms, monarchies, dictators, fascists and human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Rwanda, Honduras, Haiti, Pakistan, and Ukraine. US foreign policy is based on hegemony, empire, power, corporate interests, corruption and self-interests of the high and mighty.
Compare how much of a threat the US is to North Korea and who is paranoid. Since World War Two North Korea has not invaded anybody. The Korean War (1950 to 1953) was a civil war and authoritative historians such as I. F. Stone, Bruce Cumings, and David Halberstam agree that the South was just as responsible for instigating it. Korea itself has not invaded anybody since the 16th century. The US has attacked at least 32 countries just since WW2. North Korea has a defense budget of only $7.5 billion, compared to the US $1 Trillion. North Korea has developed nuclear weapons because the US has been threatening it with nuclear destruction since 1950, introduced nuclear weapons into South Korea in 1957 in violation of the armistice agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US keeps practicing regime change decapitation invasions and nuclear attacks against North Korea. North Korea has an estimated arsenal of 20 nuke bombs that are not a threat to the US's 15,000 nuclear arsenal. Instead the US is an asymmetrical and existential threat to North Korea. When are the American people going to wise up to the US propaganda and false cries that the evil wolf is at the door again?
References:
"North Korea: Another Country", by Bruce Cumings.
"The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia," by James Bradley.
"Korean Mind: Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture", by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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