[1] https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/ 10,000 km gets you to the west coast and significant parts of the western US, 13000 covers the whole of the US. NK has the Hwasong-15 with a nominal range of 15000 km...
The goal was simply to display performative strongman machismo using the military (just like the missile strikes on alleged drug boats). It's a branding exercise for Trump personally (not even for the US as a whole). To that end, it doesn't seem to be working, especially with the Iran quagmire.
IIRC, one of the highest profile North Korean defectors said that Jimmy Carter's interference in Bill Clinton's Korea strategy basically gave North Korea another decade to build an atom bomb. After that regime got the bomb, they became un-invadeable.
"Passcode to the Third Floor" describes this instance and other missed opportunities to undermine the North Korean regime.
That was definitely the last time the US got particularly close to a deal with North Korea that would limit it's nuclear ambitions but in a very Trump-like fashion (though to be fair this is very common) Bush came in claiming he could get a better deal and ultimately got basically nothing.
One funny side event to all this was when North Korea accidentally (?) revealed their secret uranium enrichment program when providing records from their Yongbyon reactor. They claimed at the time they didn't have a uranium enrichment program but there were traces of HEU on the records provided along with some aluminum tube samples and that scuppered the talks in 2008.
If you think US foreign policy decisions are, or ever have been, made primarily on the basis of preventing the suffering of civilians in other countries then I have an Aerospace & Defense Sector ETF to sell you.
Snark aside, the real answer is that in the past it was infeasible and undesirable due to the geopolitical situation with China and the USSR. Any major operation there would have been a Cuban missile crisis level provocation. After North Korea successfully built nuclear weapons, any sort of regime change games like the US has done in other countries became totally out of the question. There may have been a brief window in the 1990s where it would have been possible, but it still would likely have resulted in mass civilian casualties (look at where Seoul is on a map).
The only "good" realistic scenario for North Korea in the next 20 years is that they gradually reform their system akin to what China did in the late 70s, early 80s.
None of my friends in a Venezuela have noticed any actual improvements after Maduro. The current president was appointed by Maduro and was VP for 6 (?) years. I know some political prisoners are released, but if you are looking at suffering on country-level I don't think anything has changed.
North Korea is geopolitically useful as a buffer state between the United States' sphere of influence in South Korea, and China. China has defended it pretty determinedly, historically.
You don't even need China. They have the Hwasong-17 and nukes and would very likely use them to retaliate. There's a reason they were quite keen to develop nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them to the US mainland.
Even short of a nuclear response Seoul is in range of conventional artillery from North Korea and is dug in enough you couldn't destroy them all before the were able to do significant damage to Seoul.
The less snarky answer is that our current system does not have a functioning global government. There is no real “we”. Influencing how other countries operate can only be done by force or diplomacy, and because North Korea has nuclear weapons, force is basically off the table, and they’re not interested in diplomacy.
> The less snarky answer is that our current system does not have a functioning global government
What an odd thing to say. Even when there were monolithic governments ruling over certain sphere of influence like the USSR over Eastern Europe, you still had countries break ranks like Yugoslavia and Romania. A single unified government does not mean that individual actors do not know and use their own leverage to advance their own interests.
North Korea is independent for a variety of reasons, and it's not clear that a pro-US North Korea is an all-around win with no downsides for the US. I think both the US and China like having buffer states to avoid flashpoints for war.
Venezuela was much more like a coup than a military action. The military didn't meaningfully resist, anti-air weaponry did not fire - and the US knew it wasn't going to fire because otherwise there would've been choppers getting fragged left and right. And then we kind of waved off that Nobel Prize winner lady who wanted war, to say nothing of the Guido guy, let Maduro's VP take over, and she instantly become a US puppet but otherwise kept Maduroing along as usual. Interestingly her father was killed by the Venezuelan intelligence services, which was created by Chavez, and Maduro was Chavez's hand-picked successor. She sounds kind of like a Gorbachev, whose formative years were spent under the joys of Stalin. Consequences of bad actions can, and often do, manifest only decades later.
Anyhow, point being - you're not going to get anything like that in most countries. Iran should make that clear enough. North Korea is orders of magnitude stronger than Iran, and Iran is already basically unbeatable simply because they were prepared for a decapitation strike which is pretty much our only card - Americans would never tolerate a real ground war which would entail hundreds of thousands dying. And this is all just ignoring the fact that North Korea also has nuclear weapons.
The South Koreans are opposed to any provocation - any military operation will immediately start a war and the South Koreans know that they will bear the brunt of it. Whether the South Koreans are involved or not, they will still be blamed and targeted as they have a military alliance with the US. Having emerged from an economic crisis, South Koreans are also very wary of a war setting them back again. And, like the previous Korean war, China and Russia will also likely get involved.
Their main security comes from the viable threat of nuclear retaliation and the conventional artillery pointed at SK's capital city along with the lack of desire by SK to integrate and modernize NK in a hypothetical post war state.
"won" is a very strong word for a country that sits economically somewhere between South Sudan and Congo, with a primary "enemy" that started out similarly and is now easily 20 times richer.
Self-sufficiency and exclusion from global trade can be very expensive for a nation long-term (a cautionary tale, since those ideals are a bit of a siren call nowadays to many Americans, after getting quite wealthy by doing the exact opposite).
The leadership doesn't particularly care, they get to live quite plush lives in their little hermit kingdom and only care about the general population in so far as they need to be comfortable enough they don't risk rebelling. Winning for the Kim family is remaining in power and they've secured their position against outside aggression quite successfully.
Nuclear weapons and ICMBs that can deliver them to the US makes the threat more meaningful too. There was always the chance that a Trump-like president would decide a few days of shells raining down in Seoul while we hunted NK's artillery positions would be worth getting rid of NK. Road mobile ICBMs that can deliver a nuke to the US mainland removes that option unless they're REALLY REALLY strong believers in the 44 GBIs sitting in Alaska. (Ignoring their shoddy track record and the fact we only have 44 and usually shoot 2-4 at each missile)
- An enormous amount of artillery pointed at South Korea. South Korea would likely suffer the worst outcome in any intervention into North Korea.
- A nuclear-armed power who is truly ideological. Unlike Maduro, merely killing the leader is unlikely to dissuade the North Koreans. (a lesson the Trump admin is currently learning in Iran)
Plus, the quiet part that nobody ever says is neither China or South Korea actually wants to reintegrate a thoroughly brainwashed population. It would be the worst refugee crisis ever by at least an order of magnitude.
German reintegration was difficult enough, reintegrating Korea would be much harder
That's out of date, they can nominally reach the US mainland now with nuclear payloads. Accuracy and reliability are somewhat questionable but it's a huge gamble.
Nukes. And honestly man the last time the US intervened in NK we didn't leave a building taller than 2 stories standing and killed 25% of their population. I'm absolutely certain an intervention from us would be worse for NK citizens than their current government.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas...
[1] https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/ 10,000 km gets you to the west coast and significant parts of the western US, 13000 covers the whole of the US. NK has the Hwasong-15 with a nominal range of 15000 km...