I am kind of surprised. They usually require a few billion dollars in bribes and materials every decade or so in exchange for good behavior. They were due for a good round of diplomacy payoffs.
But then I guess if you refuse to pay $30,000 to a painter even after a judge orders you to do it, how can you be reasonably expected to scrape together a few billion to pay a guy to stop doing anything?
Then again, maybe the proffered bribe wasn’t big enough, in which case this is all just nuclear-age haggling. And the bribe not being big enough does fit these observations…
I realize my first paragraph is a little vague. “They” refers to the North Korean regime, not ours. I apologize for any confusion.