Wouldn't there be radiation poisoning if we nuked North Korea? Why would we take radiated land ... 

Starting World War 3 sounds like one hell of a plan! If you nuke NK, you will cause colletaral damage in China and Russia, on top of that China will never let a unified Korea under NATO-control happen. So in all essence, if the US shoots the first missile, World War 3 is upon us and life on this planet as we know it will essentially end. Sounds like one hell of a plan! China has made very clear that they will only stay neutral if NK fires the first shot.

That aside, it's not like Kim Jong-un doesn't have good reasons to act like he does. The reason for this is the US itself and how it behaved in the last decades. They invaded countries rather randomly, fighting everywhere where they thought something "bad" was going on, playing world police. Small countries that do not fit the Agenda of the US can not trust them because of that. So the only way to be secure of the bullying of the west is to have the nuke. That's why NK is doing everything it can to achieve a considerable nuclear arsenal. It's the only way they can be sure to never be attacked by the US.

Well we have weapons that could level entire cities and make them look like not much was there, or we could use a neutron bomb and radiate the country, but leave the buildings intact. 

Russia has a bomb that can basically makes the surface area ook like that of the moon.

I'd honestly go for heavy ground weaponry (bunker busters/artillery/rockets/MRBM) than resorting to nukes, mostly because nukes would irradiate the area and destroy the land, making it both a pain in the ass to clean up the radiation and to make use of what land is left (though the radiation and blast/fallout damage would make using the land more difficult of a task).

Just send in solid snake and let him take the guy out. Crisis averted.

Thanks for the info. I always thought it was weird that people only seem to talk about toxic bombs ... it seems rather inconvenient to use XD 

I'm worried about if one of these could hit a passenger plane.....

Actually nukes are not that bad in terms of radiation contamination like in games such as 'Fallout' would imply ... 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples of atomic bomb targets yet their still habitable to this very day but if we take a look at Chernobyl or Fukushima which had Nuclear Power Plant accidents that involved reactor meltdowns the locals needed to evacuate ... 

An atomic bomb has small amounts of fissionable material compared to nuclear reactors which have thousands of tons of fissionable material so nukes are relatively safe to use for their low radiation contamination ...

^ so much that.

StarOcean what you said, could so easily go really really wrong.

I actually think its safer if the US slipped some assasins accross the boarder and they took down the leader.

Then when it happends, the US goes "Someone shot him?! Oh thats too bad. It wasnt us that did it".

However even that carries some risk, if it goes wrong, you might get a nuke strike sent your way.

China doesn't like Japan all that much so I doubt they will let an invasion of North Korea go unanswered.

So no risk at all? :P

Anyway, a full on war against NK would help absolutely no one. You just need to remove the upper echelon somehow. Maybe even support a military coup. Because whatever replaces the current leader cannot possibly be worse.