Thai diplomat Kantathi Suphamongkhon North Korea "they see themselves as victims"

Veteran diplomat Kantathi Suphamongkhon had been to Pyongyang several times, and dealt with top officials there. He told Al Jazeera that the last thing the country needs is an an all-out armed conflict.

In one of his trips to Pyongyang as Thai foreign minister a few years ago, Suphamongkhon recalled asking top officials how they would react to a complete withdrawal of US troops from the border with South Korea. 

"There's a lot of misunderstanding going on, if one look into their mind [North Korea's] , they see themselves as victims. So their behaviour is logical from that standpoint." -Kantathi Suphamongkhon, veteran Thai diplomat

The answer surprised him. Pyongyang, he said, saw the idea as an "act of destabilisation" instead of a peaceful overture - a sign that the US is getting ready for a missile strike.

The incident, Suphamongkhon said, illustrates North Korea's "gap of perception" and  level of suspicion, which in turn fuels its antagonistic behaviour towards the US and the world. 

'Cat with no claw'

"There's a lot of misunderstanding going on," Suphamongkhon told Al Jazeera. "If one looks into their mind, they see themselves as victims. So their behaviour is logical from that standpoint."

Although these repeated acts of "belligerence" may frustrate many, Soomin Seo, a South Korean journalist and a scholar, said they are North Korea's attempts to capture the attention of the world, particularly the US. 
"They know that just about the only card that they can use to grab the outside world's attention, specifically the US, is nuclear weapons," said Seo, who visited the North numerous times during Kim Jong-il's regime.

Seo pointed out that there have been "genuine attempts" by the North to engage South Korea and the US. She cited the historic meetings betwen Kim Jong-il and South Korea's Kim Dae-jung, as well as President Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

But the North quickly retreated, when President George W Bush said it was part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, she said, erasing the trust that took years to build.  

"I don't think they really got over it, and they could not understand why a country as big as the United States would break its promise," Seo said. "North Korea bet on that. That's the only possible future of their economy."