To understand how North Korea policy has become a diplomatic no-man's land empty, hopeless and likely to stay that way, if recent pronouncements by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are any indication it helps to visit the physical no-man's land of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
Kim Jong Il's secretive visit to Shanghai this week, the North Korean leader's second factory-tour to China in eight months, suggests he is starting to understand how much North Korea has to learn.
So too, the US fails to understand how its diplomatic weakness toward North Korea enhances Iran's position at the bargaining table and advances its nuclear weapons program.
In this respect, the people in North Korea need to understand that it is in their own fundamental interest to denounce nuclear weapons and abide by international nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
At a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, Mr Kerry said North Korea had to understand by now "that its threats and provocations are only going to isolate it further and impoverish its people even further".
And new leader in North Korea will have to understand that he cannot survive alone in this world.
WHITEHOUSE: President Obama and President Lee Hold a News Conference
Loosely, that is the question posed by North Korea-watchers trying to understand how an odious regime has remained stable for so long, defying frequent predictions of its downfall.
They also understand the extraordinary dangers in pushing North Korea to the brink of collapse.
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"We again strongly urge North Korea to stop this kind of insistence that we cannot totally understand and go down the path of a wise choice, " spokesman Cho Tai-young told reporters.
They do not seem to understand that the United States and nations in their own region feel threatened by North Korea's nuclear program, which has in the past produced enough plutonium to build several nuclear weapons.
And from the perspective of the people of North Korea, they will understand that its leader is spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to launch a long-range missile.
WHITEHOUSE: President Obama and President Lee Hold a News Conference
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