I have to say, the Medium article will be bellow but I have some additional thoughts to lay out
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-missile-intelligence.html
from the article :
Mr. Kim tested eight intermediate-range missiles in 2016, but seven blew up on the pad or shattered in flight — which some officials attributed partly to an American sabotage program accelerated by President Barack Obama. And while the North had carried out five underground atomic tests, the intelligence community estimated that it remained years away from developing a more powerful type of weapon known as a hydrogen bomb.
Within months, those comforting assessments looked wildly out of date.
At a speed that caught American intelligence officials off guard, Mr. Kim rolled out new missile technology — based on a decades-old Soviet engine design, apparently developed in a parallel program — and in quick succession demonstrated ranges that could reach Guam, then the West Coast, then Washington.
And on the first Sunday in September, he detonated a sixth nuclear bomb. After early hesitation among analysts, a consensus has now emerged that it was the North’s first successful test of a hydrogen weapon, with explosive force some 15 times greater than the atom bomb that leveled Hiroshima.
Would the Hillary Clinton who was part of an administration what was asleep at the wheel when this happened......what would she have done in response. Would she have reflexively covered for her own and her husband's failures?
My original bit is bellow
(( https://medium.com/@karasoth/north-korea-having-nukes-shouldnt-scare-you-553755a870da Me from September 2016 ))
This should:
In the event of collapse, there are several issues that will have to be thought through, none of which are simple. First and foremost is the Chinese reaction. In any scenario in which the North Korean regime falls, many of its former subjects will head across the Yalu River. Beijing already sits uneasily on its relationship with its western minorities; with several million ethnic Koreans already living in China, Beijing fears another problem in borderlands, this time in its northeast. This potential trouble spot is much close to the growing middle class in Beijing, and it would be much harder to contain reports of repression. Chinese Koreans would also have a powerful voice across the Yellow Sea in the new, larger Korea….. The next issue is peace between a unified Korea and China, with more than a possibility of the tension along the 38th parallel simply moving north to the new international boarder. China would have to be convinced that Korea would pose no threat and the departure of U.S. troops might be the price to secure Beijing’s acceptance of a unified Korea. Any belligerence on the part of Seoul during an imminent collapse of Pyongyang could be interpreted by China as a need to cross the Yalu River, where Beijing already claims the inter-river islands. A new partition is a possibility, with China occupying the northern half of North Korea, down to Pyongyang,saving the elites who occupy “Pyonghatten.” In the case of a what would be a rather brotherly occupation, theprobable Chinese zone would simultaneously accomplish two goals for China: It would be able to install a pliant regime that would no longer threaten the South or Japan, driving a wedge into the 70-year-old alliance between Beijing and Pyongyang. Establishing China’s international border with Korea a hundred miles or so south of the Yalu River would retain a buffer between China and a strong Western adversary.
And this is a “BEST CASE SCENARIO” with Grumpy china being the only problem.
Because if we look at the case of East Germany the most prosperous and economically vibrant communist state it still has not fully recovered and caught up to West Germany 27 years later. North Korea is the most or in the top three of damaged communist economies. What will the profound effects on the South Korean economy (vital in modern electronics) in having to carry around the dead weight.
What about the effect of Korean refugees going to Japan?
And (framing it in our Presidential election) do we want the Wife of the man whose policies began 24 years of managed neglect of North Korea to be President?