Every time the U.S. and South Korean military conduct maneuvers North Korea threatens to attack someone. This reality is absent in the current news media. In July of 2010 the dance of maneuvers and North Korean threats was carried out just as today (http://www.masslive.com/...). The same has been true back into the 1980s and 1970s (see example from 1987 at :http://articles.latimes.com/...). THis is like bear bating, and if we want to stop the raging of the North Koreans we can stop these massive demonstrations of military threats our maneuvers represent to the North Koreans. What we are doing is provoking an expected response, it is obvious that the North Koreans respond in an uncreative way to these maneuvers, but this is not a road to peace. We have to recall that more Napalm was dropped on North Korea than during the entire Second World War and that was just Napalm, it does not include the tonnage of other bombs and artillery shells (see the new book by Robert Neer, Napalm, 2013: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...).
Of course like the Reagan invasion of Granada, banging on the North Korean cage produces a sufficient distraction from other national and international problems. It does appear, then, that no one really wants to solve the North Korean problem, it is a useful foreign policy pinata.