North Korea will take an “all-out confrontational posture” to “shatter” South Korea, according to the North’s Army spokesman. At the same time, the North claims to have “weaponized” plutonium to create four or five nuclear bombs. The country is clamoring for attention.

“Now that traitor [South Korean President] Lee Myung Bak and his group opted for confrontation, denying national reconciliation and cooperation, backed by foreign forces, our revolutionary armed forces are compelled to take an all-out confrontational posture to shatter them,” said a statement from the Korean People’s Army, released Saturday.

North Korea said the South had forced Pyongyang’s “revolutionary armed forces to take a strong military retaliatory step to wipe them out.”

At the same time, it has emerged that North Korean officials told Selig Harrison, a North Korean expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, that the North has weaponized enough plutonium for four or five bombs. The officials did not clarify exactly what they meant by “weaponized.”

The United States has been engaged in the current round of talks with North Korea for five years. Once again, North Korea has shown it will not give up its nukes easily. Though an agreement was agreed in the latest round of six-nation talks, North Korea has not dismantled its nuclear weapons program.

Referring to when North Korea “disabled” its Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2007 only to threaten to reverse the process, former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations John Bolton wrote, “This ploy is yet another example of the North’s consistently successful negotiating tactic of selling the same concessions again and again for higher and higher prices” (National Interest Online, Oct. 30, 2008).

With a new president in the White House, once again North Korea will try to sell concessions that it has already sold—hoping for a higher return.

As Bolton pointed out, negotiating with these kind of countries does not work. “[T]he basic flaw of the six-party talks is the foundational assumption that North Korea could be talked out of its nuclear weapons,” he wrote. “There has never been a shred of evidence, over nearly two decades of nuclear negations, that the North is truly prepared to make such a dramatic shift in its strategic thinking. There have only been statements by the North’s diplomats and propagandists that too-willing U.S. negotiators have seized upon to cobble together ‘nuances’ and ‘hints’ of negotiating flexibility” (ibid.).

America is trying to use the same flawed strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” It hasn’t worked in North Korea; it won’t work in Iran.

The U.S. simply does not have the will to stop either North Korea or Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

And by taking no action on North Korea, the U.S. allows Pyongyang to export its deadly technology to radical nations like Syria and Iran.

North Korea may be perceived as a crazy nation with nuclear bombs, but the U.S., by expecting the same old failed negotiations to yield different results, is surely acting in an “insane” manner also.