I don't understand how the same liberals that lambasted Trump for suggesting South Korea and/or Japan should be allowed to own nuclear weapons don't have issues with North Korea decades deep into developing a functional nuclear program. If there's one military intervention I might actually think could be good in the long run, it's bombing every piece of artillery and potential nuke-holding space that North Korea has, without warning. South Korea needs to be on board since they have the most to lose, but North Korea is a totally different animal from Iran or the other usual targets of fear.
Do you have a Time machine to take us back to the early 90's?
Stupid rhetorical question, but the fact is the North Koreans have been on a quest to obtain something to defend the Kim regime from foreign invasion for over half a century. They are very, very advanced in terms of rocket propulsion, aerodynamics, and their chemical weapons program is supposedly the most extensive currently on earth. They are militarily an order of magnitude more professional and technologically capable than, for example, Iraq or even Syria. They started development of ballistic missiles back in the late 60s/early70s and already had the ability to hit Hawaii back in 2006. They've had the time since then to make anywhere between 10 and 50 warheads. Assuming their thermonuclear boosting technology still isn't perfected, they still could level much of the west coast of the US and they wouldn't even need to use rockets on south korea. They demonstrated the ability to repeatedly launch 1500kg payloads into low earth orbit, which would be enough to send a 250kg warhead around the entire world. Or a 1500kg warhead to California. Their true capabilities are much more dependent on their ability to miniaturize the warhead vs increasing rocket payload.
The current level of capability of the DPRK in a full-fledged nuclear conflict is unknown, but it is known that millions, if not tens of millions will die in even a short conflict between NK, SK, and the USA. If nukes are used, you can bet that it will be in the multiple millions.
When GHWB invaded Iraq, a country that had just been bombed (i think) for building its own reactor and had no ability to defend itself from a US invasion. Kim Jong Il watched Iraq be destroyed, and Saddam barely escape. Kim saw him be attacked again, when he was defenseless, and had already allowed inspectors into the country to find "WMD"s. He saw him dragged from his hiding hole 6 months after his country was invaded, 100,000 of his citizens were killed, and then he was put on Trial by the same people who killed those hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, for "killing thousands" of those same Iraqis and then hanged on public TV. Kim will not forget what the US does to nations that do not "tow the line". Sooner or later, the US overthrows those nations. The ones who don't get overthrown? Those are the ones with nukes.