North Korea is playing the Long Game and has scored a significant victory against the US. Trump is ill suited to be running US foreign policy at this time. Any competent leader would understand the situation and negotiate a face-saving long term treaty for peace on the Korean peninsula. Instead, Trump is blustering and threatening and in the long run will have to declare bankruptcy, screw his creditors and claim victory... as usual.

The good news is that it is very unlikely that hostilities will breakout. The consequences are just too great. Can you just imagine millions dead, and a giant radioactive cloud moving East? Perhaps even San Francisco, LA, NY Boston and DC destroyed as a worst case scenario. This is the situation that Pyongyang has engineered.

Korea was occupied by Japan before and up to the end of WWII. It should have been put back together as one country, as it had been historically. That it didn't happen is a massive historical fuck-up. At the end of WWII the Soviet Union occupied the North and the US occupied the South. Attempts to put it back together failed mostly due to the Soviet Union's miscalculations and the US determination to stop anything that had the whiff of communism.

A usual, the US managed to get a corrupt, brutal dictator, Rhee Syngman, installed in S. Korea. He slaughtered 10s of thousands of his own people. From Wiki:

He allowed the internal security force (headed by his right-hand man, Kim Chang-ryong) to detain and torture suspected communists and the Korean agents. His government also oversaw several massacres, including the suppression of the Jeju Uprising on Jeju island, where South Korea's Truth Commission reported 14,373 victims, 86% at the hands of the security forces and 13.9% at the hands of communist rebels,[24] Mungyeong massacre.

By early 1950 Rhee had about 30,000 alleged communists in his jails, and had about 300,000 suspected sympathisers enrolled in an official "re-education" movement the Bodo League. When communist army attacked from the North in June, retreating South Korean forces executed the prisoners, along several tens of thousands Bodo League members.[25]

He was fiercely against reunification.

The Korean War:

The North attacked the South, realizing that unification otherwise would not happen. The North prevailed and captured a huge part of the South. The US immediately sponsored a UNSC resolution, actually two, to allow military action against the North. The USSR had screwed the pooch and was boycotting the UNSC. There was not enough time to do anything about it. The US used massive firepower and a surprise amphibious assault to push the North out of the South and most of the North. China intervened at this point and pushed the US back below the 38th parallel. In effect, China beat the US, but stopped at the demarcation line. Why? I don't know, again a massive screw up. In the meanwhile, the US had used artillery and areal bombardment to drive the North back to the stone age, with some one million+/- dead and almost no building of any size left standing. The DPRK is still smarting over this gratuitous punishment, certainly a hallmark of US brutality to be repeated many times around the world.

After the first two months of war, South Korean and U.S. forces rapidly dispatched to Korea were on the point of defeat, forced back to a small area in the south known as the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Incheon, and cut off many North Korean troops. Those who escaped envelopment and capture were forced back north. UN forces rapidly approached the Yalu River—the border with China—but in October 1950, mass Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war.[41] The surprise Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951.

After these reversals of fortune, which saw Seoul change hands four times, the last two years of fighting became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th parallel. The war in the air, however, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign.

As a result of the war, North Korea set up artillery and rockets sufficient to level much of the South close to the 38th parallel, especially Seoul. Even today, the North can level the city with conventional artillery.

The problem for the DPRK is that any military action would be met with overwhelming US retaliation, another 2 million dead and their infrastructure flattened. This effectively gave the US the winning hand in the theoretical confrontation. Furthermore, only an Armistice was ever signed, agreeing to cessation of hostilities, with no long term peace treaty. The US is fine with this, or I should say Was fine with it. It gave the US a reason and purpose to maintaining overwhelming military presence in the Korean theater, and kept the South as a permanent client.

The DPRK just changed the situation drastically. They demonstrated nuclear capability and a delivery capability. The US has been totally neutered in preventing this. It is extremely significant that the DPRK fired missiles directly over areas covered by US air defenses. Nothing happened. The US could have made a critical statement by destroying the DPRK medium range offensive weapons. "See, we can stop you, your threats are hollow". But no, probably because the US made air defense systems are useless against IRBMs and ICBMs. Too much money spent on 1000 foreign bases and fighting endless wars in the ME, and on really big defense hardware boondoggles. Besides, the Defense department always pays for shit that doesn't work and then asks for more. It's endemic if you understand the corruption.

So where do we stand? In the game of war threats, the DPRK is now certifiably real. No wonder the Deep State has their panties in a wad! Trump is just a mouthpiece for them. He never stood a chance.

A sane leader would now negotiate a peace treaty on the Korean peninsula, defining the relationship between the North and the South, a guaranty no hostilities, and removal of the US military from the Korean Peninsula.

So the obvious question is: how does South Korea feel about a Nuclear North? Actually I hear that they are not concerned, but much more concerned about the US. They are also pissed that all of the news that the Western media can print about Korea is about the "illegal" nuclear North. The world should get the 'F out of Korea and let the two governments figure out how to get along and perhaps some day reunify.

I'm not a expert on this topic but I done some interesting research. I'm more than willing to let others correct my impressions of events.