It was Walter Mondale, the former US vice president, who said that anyone claiming to be an expert on North Korea was either a liar or a fool.
Since the threats of nuclear attacks against its southern neighbour and the USA, North Korea seems to have spawned many experts in the West. Most of those who are neither liars nor fools agree that the threats constitute sabre rattling by the young and untried leader, Kim Jong-un, to keep the military in check so that some reforms, especially to the command economy, can be implemented.
Others say the threats are real enough. After all, last time round under Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il, the Cheonan, a South Korean ship, was bombed, drowning 46 seamen, and Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea was shelled, killing four people.
It is a step too far, though, to leap from what any regime which has a 'military first' policy and spends at least a quarter of its GDP on military hardware would regard as 'small fry killings' to nuclear holocaust which would mean millions of North Korean deaths but, more importantly for the regime, the end of the Kim dynasty.
I've visited North Korea twice and negotiated, with a real expert by my side, the Caritas program in the country with government officials. I have continued to keep an interest in the country as I can't quite remove from my memory the stunted bodies of orphans in small towns near Pyongyang or the medieval obstetric equipment I saw in a hospital in Wonsan or the chain gangs of ordinary citizens fixing roads in bitter winds and snow.
And that's what they allow you to see. Many counties are closed at an hour's notice because of troop movements or too many citizens dropping dead from hunger. In addition to weaponry, these are the images negotiators have to keep in their mind's eye.
But in the search for an opening to end all talk of outright war, the West makes the paranoia of North Koreans even worse with their lack of historical context, insults and lack of cultural understanding.
Koreans have long memories, both of their glittering cultural past and the annexation of the country by Japan from 1910 until 1945, when attempts were made to suppress Korean culture and traditions. The memory of that experience is perhaps softened by gangnam style, the hi-tech and the rampant consumerism of contemporary Seoul but certainly not in the