This time around, the real pressure is being applied to N. Korean regime. Previously, we hoped it would collapse sooner or later. But we made the mistake of supplying them with critical life support materials and not applying any real pressure, hoping that N. Korea will loosen up. And China was also keen to prop it up. N. Korea was free to do its missile/nuke bomb business with Mid-East countries, exporting drugs, getting a lot of cash from Kim Dae-Jung.
If all of that is gone and N. Korean elites keep defecting, the regime is in trouble.
Bruce Cummings can dream whatever he wants. He has been out of it for a long time. He even claimed that '95-'97 famine "a temporary recession" which N. Korea would get out of. Yeah, right. N. Korea did improve a bit after massive injection of money and material from S. Korea, America, and Japan. N. Korean economy is in permanent life support. Cumming is an idiot who has trouble with eating his words. He blamed S. Korea for starting the Korean War until documents from Soviet archives conclusively proved otherwise. He has no credibility. But he is a biggie in E. Asian Studies. Everyone who wants to get a job in this area has to kowtow to him. The completely discredited leftie ideologues still has too much power. I cringe every time his name is mentioned.
Actually, Hwang Jang-Yop, the former party secretary of N. Korean Worker's Party and the most prominent N. Korean defector to date, maintains that the resolute steady pressure to N. Korea will force it to drastically change its course even without any military confrontation. He said, in a recent talk, that Kim Jong-Il was such a selfish egoist that he would not dare go suicidal by taking on U.S. with his nukes. In short, he does not mind starving millions of N. Koreans to stay in power but he won't risk his own life just to go down in a blaze of glory rather than back off.