[T]he main threat to the South's security is the general lack of public identification with the ROK and its values, as opposed to any widespread vuln… - Brian Reynolds Myers

Japan's racialized worldview equated virtue with strength, the North Koreans are taught that their virtue has rendered them as vulnerable as children in an evil world — unless they are protected by a great leader who keeps a watchful eye on military readiness. Unfortunately for the United States, there is no place in this for any improvement in relations between the two countries.

[T]he 1919 uprising is memorialized in the North without a public holiday as an example of how badly things go when a nation lacks a parental leader. This doesn’t stop propaganda from claiming the protests originated under the influence of Kim Hyŏng-jik, the father of Kim Il Sung, who himself impressed everyone at the age of six by … but never mind. The Blue House is unlikely to quibble with this version of history on the day itself. With these meshing tendencies and measures the ruling camp evidently hopes to bond with the Kim regime over a shared anti-Japanese tradition, to present today’s ROK and DPRK as branches of the same Shanghai tree, put nationalism above liberal-democratic principles, and minimize opposition to all these things. No less obvious is the larger goal.

If anything, the North Koreans are probably going to be more inclined to behave themselves in the run up to the election in May. They do not want to do anything that would help a conservative candidate and a North Korean nuclear test would force either Moon or Ahn or both those candidates to make some kind of hard-line statement which they could of course back on and probably would go back but it would at least delay the resumption of unilateral aid to North Korea and Kim Jong-un quite possibly want that.