The Realities Behind the North Korean Nuclear Programme.

 There seems to continue to be this myth that North Korea is testing nuclear missiles just because of "US Imperialism". The fact is UK and USA were never going to invade North Korea. Just because of messianic statements made back in 2003 by the Bush II administration about North Korea ( as with Iraq and Iran ) comprising an "Axis of Evil" does not mean it was ever really targeted as Iraq was.

The North Korean nuclear programme is about retaining scope for manoeuvre against both China and the USA, with China itself harbouring imperial ambitions with regards to an impoverished regime starving and in need of trade and aid.

A realistic assessment of North Korea's nuclear ambitions back in 2009 was offered by historian Mark Almond,

"North Korea's regime has spent decades controlling how its subjects see reality. Ordinary people routinely sing the praises of the bizarre Communist dynasty which has tyrannised and starved them since 1945. All that North Koreans know, or have been told, is that once again their ruler has successfully defied the hostile outside world. Whether it was a success or failure makes little difference to Kim Jong-il as long as he can keep his own people fooled.

The North Korean dictator's sabre-rattling is less about frightening the West as about intimidating his own people. In 1994, he inherited absolute power from his father, Kim il-sung and is grooming one of his sons to succeed him. North Korea's ruling family sees creating international tension as its best survival strategy. With its own nuclear bomb and now a ' successful' satellite launch, Kim's message to his people is clear: Nobody is coming to liberate you from my rule"
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So the notion the North Korea's programme and threats of a fourth bomb test are less about some reflexive "reaction" to the USA ( as advocated by supposed "peace activist Kate Hudson of CND ) but about retaining scope for manoeuvre with China against its potential encroachments and domestic control of the populace.

Update

Peter Hitchens has also written sensibly,

North Korea is pitiable, hopelessly poor, not very sober and almost derelict, trying to find its way out of a dead end.

That dead end, at present, leads only to Chinese domination, a fate which might well suit the rest of the world, but which North Koreans themselves greatly dread. As the Tibetans and the Uighurs know (in Tibet and Chinese Turkestan), Chinese domination means the end of national culture, probably the population of the national territory with Han Chinese until the Koreans become a minority in their own country. This is the form which modern Chinese imperialism takes, and I am always amazed that people who get hoity-toity about the wicked past of British imperialism are so uninterested in this development.