the North Korean leaders have only one goal--and that is for their regime to survive-if at any time they thought this was in jeopardy they would have no reservations to unleash everything they have (nuclear weapons, chemical weapons etc) against Japan, South Korea, USA and even China-they have no regards for their own population so there are no "checks/balance" regarding this escalating-I think that there needs to be a reconvening of the 6 party conferences from the past (China, Russia, US, Japan, SKorea, NKorea) to determine how best to de-escalate this situation