North Korea says it wants South Korea. It might just get it.

There is a certain view, popular mostly among the soft-liners who did so much to get us into this crisis and now seek to reassure themselves, that North Korea only wants nukes to protect itself from us. They aren’t wrong; it’s just that they’re less than half right. Pyongyang says it wants nukes as a defensive deterrent, and of course, it does:

Pyongyang, April 29 (KCNA) — The Korean People’s Army is providing strong support for the nuclear power in the East, the invincible military power as it reliably protects peace and security of the Korean peninsula, resolutely smashing the reckless moves of the U.S. imperialists and their vassal forces for a nuclear war against the DPRK, Rodong Sinmun Saturday says in an article.

The DPRK’s nuclear deterrence for self-defence is the powerful guarantee for defusing the danger of a nuclear war and ensuring durable peace on the Korean peninsula and a common treasure of the nation for reunification and prosperity of the country, the article notes, and goes on:

The U.S. is the arch criminal increasing the tension and escalating the danger of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.

Peace cannot be protected by submission and begging. It is the nature of the imperialists to become more violent when someone begs for peace. And it is the bitter lesson taught by history and reality that submission and concession to imperialism will result in wreck of peace and stability and ruin of a country and nation.

The DPRK has bolstered up its nuclear deterrence despite all sorts of ordeals to foil the U.S. brigandish moves for a nuclear war and defend the destiny of the entire nation.

But the soft-liners willfully ignore the greater part of Pyongyang’s stated intentions. If you want to know what those intentions are — and some of us are trying very hard not to — the best-educated speculation is worth less than Pyongyang’s own declarations. All you have to do is read them:

The era for independent reunification advancing under the banner of By Our Nation Itself was ushered to end the history of national division spanning more than half a century and the inter-Korean relations achieved epochal development. This would have been unthinkable without the invincible military strength of the DPRK provided by the Songun politics.

But surely, you say, it’s still unthinkable — the idea of a backward, impoverished state imposing “independent reunification” on its own terms over one of the world’s most prosperous states. Surely the days when Sparta could conquer Athens are centuries behind us. Surely the North’s conscripts would be agog and disillusioned at the first sign of the South’s prosperity (or whatever remained of it). But as I’ve argued, the North has no intention of occupying the South for the foreseeable future, until it subdues the South politically, ideologically, and economically. And as I’ve also argued, it’s closer to achieving this than most of us know, or dare to admit.

All Koreans are benefiting from the Songun politics and living under the protection of the nuclear power in the East. The DPRK’s strong nuclear deterrence for self-defence provided by the great Songun politics is the symbol of the national dignity and precious treasure common to the nation.

If the U.S. and the south Korean puppet group persist in escalating the moves to stifle the DPRK, the latter will further strengthen its nuclear deterrence. -0-

As if they weren’t going to do that anyway.

It would have required no geopolitical genius to predict in 1933 that Hitler’s rule would inevitably end in war and suffering. One would only have had to read an honest translation of “Mein Kampf” to see it. So it is today; Pyongyang’s intentions are on full display to those who are willing to read them. It has a clear and plausible strategy for winning the same goal it has repeated for decades. What’s more, it knows that it cannot long survive as the poorer, failed Korea as the flow of information slowly undermines its legitimacy in the eyes of its own people. It knows very well that within the next decade, and perhaps much less, one Korea or the other must dominate and absorb the other. Are we willing to listen to the protagonist in this escalating crisis?

Korean War II began in earnest with the attacks of 2010. Pyongyang’s war is no longer a conventional invasion, but a war of skirmishes that supports a strategy that is primarily political. It will premeditate a series of escalating provocations, each of them calculated to end with certain concessions that will pave its way to one-country, two-systems hegemony over the South. I would argue that Pyongyang came close to achieving many of its political objectives during Roh Moo-hyun’s presidency. Pyongyang will soon add to this strategy the leverage of an effective nuclear arsenal and the capacity to strike the United States. Given the political instability and mercurial public sentiment in South Korea, and the rising risk of a breach in the U.S.-Korea alliance, our question will soon be, “Who will stop them?”