On North Korea, persuasion must be the tactic of choice

Sometimes North Korea resembles the last gulag in an era of globalisation. Other times, it's like the latest battleground of a post-cold war era. Despite warnings from the US and China, North Korea audaciously conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday, as it had promised it would.

The totalitarian state, which carried out nuclear weapons tests in 2006 and 2009, pushed the 15-nation UN Security Council to convene an emergency meeting. With the possibility of "significant action" looming over the latest nuclear test, fundamental debates over whether North Korea is ripe for regime change have come to the fore again.

Indeed, for a few decades now, regime change has been a staple of much conservative thinking, with analysts claiming that the Kim dynasty is on the brink of collapse.

Yet, there is a strong possibility that these conservative voices are wrong. First, there is the resilience of the unique North Korean political system, demonstrated by the history of the past 60 years.

By the late 1990s, its economy was on the brink of collapse. During the darkest days, North Korea suffered from natural and man-made disasters, mass starvation caused by food shortages and a series of economic policy failures, as well as tension over the nuclear stand-off with the United States and neighbouring countries, including South Korea. Famine threatened to engulf the nation. And yet, the Korean Workers' Party and the military, the main pillars supporting the rickety regime, continue to exist in a mutually beneficial symbiosis.

It is generally felt that young Kim Jong-un has been consolidating his leadership in the months since his father Kim Jong-il's sudden death in December 2011. Kim Jong-un appears more moderate and pragmatic than his father or grandfather, Kim Il-sung, although his whim is still the law.