But no one believes instability on the Korean Peninsula serves anybody's interest. That raises the prospects of an eventual breakthrough.
Although North Korea often warns of an impending nuclear war, its leaders know conflict with the US would mean their end. Washington fears that in a war's initial hours, North Korea could shower artillery shells and missiles on Seoul.
If North Korea had carried out its threat to walk out of the talks, it would have been a slap in the face of China, which enjoys growing trade ties with the US but remains Pyongyang's closest ally.
Beijing arranged and hosted the multilateral talks and wants to see them succeed, an outcome that would burnish its international image. Since Chinese troops fought American forces during the Korean War, Beijing has seen North Korea as a buffer against American influence in the region.
Russia, which first set up a client communist regime in the North at the end of World War II, now wants to link its Trans-Siberian railway and shaky economy with South Korean and Japanese exports and investors -- a project put on hold because of nuclear tensions.
South Korea and Japan have joined the US in stating they have no intention of invading the North and would help its economy prosper once it gives up its nuclear program.
North Korea remains to be convinced.
When US and Soviet forces divided the small peninsula nation following its liberation from brutal Japanese colonial rule in 1945, Koreans chanted a popular limerick: "Don't trust Americans! Don't be cheated by Russians! Koreans be careful! Or the Japanese will rise again."
In today's globalizing South Korea, those terse lines have little circulation. But they pretty much sum up the mood in the North.
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