Kim Jong Il actually does have WMD. All the same arguments would apply, and yet we haven't attacked him.
I'm not saying Im' for it, but it would have made more sense.
First off all, while Iraq and North Korea are similar, they're not the same. While NK attacked the South 50+ years ago, they were pushed, aided, and abetted by the world's communist camp, and in reality, the Korea war was a war between the West and the communists. One we tried to contain and minimize for a lot of reasons good and bad. Saddam's attack on Iran, and then on helpless Kuwait, was more recent, not sponsored by a larger power, and put the whole Middle East and the oil there (oil that we need to survive) in a very precarious situation. If Kim attacks South Korea, it won't be should we go to war with them, we WILL be at war with them. No deliberation, no consulting the UN; nothing. Just WAR.
Secondly, 9/11 changed everything. Saddam was an Arab and Muslim who used his ethnicity and religion to promote hatred against us from the very same folks who attacked us in the first place. Now he might not have been a practicing Allah-fearing Muslim fanatic, but his very stance and position with them clearly put him in the same camp as our active enemy. Once again, as I stated before, we simply could not take the chance with him either getting out of the sanctions or using materials against us that EVERYONE thought he had. And frankly, regime change in Iraq had been codified as the policy of our government since 1998.
So you can't use one case to prove or disprove the other. I do agree we need to do something about Kim and NK, but it's also apparent that Kim is trying to scare us into a deal. I understand what you're saying, but I just take issue with it saying we need to be fair or the same in all our dealings with other nations. We need to look out for #1, strike bad guys when we can if that assures our safety, and ignore or talk when striking causes worse problems.