" North Korea's recent brinkmanship is nothing but a desperate reaction to the Bush administration's sudden policy shift, which has made the impoverished nation economically crippled and internationally isolated. With the prospect of an imminent war in Iraq, North Korea regards itself as the next target of US unilateralism and its agenda of "regime change".  Parmendra Jain, Professor of Asian Studies, Adelaide University, March 2003

Professor Jain explains in this AsiaTimes Online article how the Bush Administration has been simultanesoully goading and gutting the Koreans:

[extract]

The Agreed Framework, however, has unilaterally been breached by the Bush administration. Not only has the US administration stopped supportive activities to North Korea, it also choked some of Pyongyang's vital sources of foreign-currency earnings. For example, the US pressured Israel to withdraw payment of some US$3 billion to Pyongyang that it had earlier agreed as part of stopping North Korea's exports of missiles and technologies to Arab nations. Further, North Korea has been pushed to the wall by declaring it as part of the "axis of evil" and not producing any new evidence that North Korea was in breach of any international obligation.

 Read the rest of the Article here.