I'm not overly fond of the Kim regime, but I'm dramatically less not-fond of them than western governments and media outlets would like me to be.

North Korea is not a proletarian state. Juche has been severed entirely from its quasi-Marxist roots at this point. Politically, the DPRK appears to be a dynastic monarchy. The DPRK exports its cheap labor to regional allies. Accurate information about domestic affairs is hard to come by, but I'm not aware of any credible evidence of workplaces being under democratic control. I don't think syndicalism/direct workplace democracy is the only valid form of socialist economy, but the combination of state managerial control and a non-proletarian state does not add up to socialism in my book. That said, I recognize that virtually every piece of information I base those conclusions about the nature of North Korean workplaces and the North Korean state are filtered through an imperialist lens, and I am fully open to the possibility that I am dead wrong in my characterization of the DPRK.

What I do know is that the DPRK began as a Marxist revolutionary state, and that it has been under a literal and metaphorical siege by imperial capitalism since its birth as a nation. I think most, if not all of the DPRK's "outrageous" behavior vis-a-vis the so-called international community is at least partially justified by the circumstances it has been forced into by outside aggressors. I can't fault the DPRK for wanting nuclear weapons, for saber rattling when they feel threatened by the US and South Korea, or for 'excessive' military spending. I don't think all their tactics on that front have been entirely wise or effective, but to paraphrase Lenin, I cannot offer a valid criterion for deciding which blows are necessary and which are superfluous in a fight.

My ideal resolution to the Korean peninsula standoff is, of course, a simultaneous workers' uprising in the North and the South resulting in a unified Marxist-Leninist Korean state. Better still would be a simultaneous workers' uprising across the globe, leading to the immediate abolition of the very concept of distinct nation-states.