Probably. But they will never ever do that unless they are invaded. The reason is that once they use a nuke they will immediately be invaded by a US-China alliance that allows China to maintain it's sphere of influence there after a fast US withdrawal. The US will be in on the invasion because one of our allies got nuked and there's no way anybody gets away with that. The Chinese will be in on the invasion because there's no chance WWIII starts if the US and China are both on the same side in the battle. The losers will be whoever got nuked and hereditary rule in North Korea. No more Dear Leaders at that point. The winners will likely be the surviving North Koreans and everybody who avoided getting nuked in the run up to the steam roller. The campaign would make the push to Tora Bora look like the Thirty Years War by comparison.
That's the enormous downside of iron-fisted hereditary rule. Eventually you get a total nut-job in power and if he really does have absolute power things go bad from there. Think Caligula or Nero with nukes. My best guess is that one of the nut-jobs generals would kill him if it got to that. It's too nutty for anybody to invite the destruction of national sovereignty in that manner.
what about this article? http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/world/asia/un-north-korea-sanctions/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
The one problem with nuking NoKor is that the fallout will travel from west to east. That means if NoKor somehow manages to set off a powerful enough nuke on the Peninsula, the WC of the USA might feel the effects of the fallout. As for the rest of it, NoKor has to keep up the front of fighting against an imperialist enemy in the US as justification for its worker's sacrifices (read that starvation). Otherwise, it certainly risks discord even in such a regimented society as theirs. Its happened in China not that long ago which is the reason why the ruling class can't put the brakes on runaway economic growth and/or inflation.
Well I have no idea how big any bomb Dear Leader could drop on us but Little Boy was 13 kilotons and Fat Man was 21. According to that map (and my guess is they are quite larger now) a bomb the size of Fat Man dropped in the center of Las Vegas Blvd would barely hit the airport at McCarron. It would take out most of the Strip but I'm far enough away that I'd be lucky enough to die from the fallout. Even a 500 kiloton bomb doesn't incenrate my house. By comparison the Soviet Union developed Bomba Tsara that if dropped in Midtown Manhattan would takes out LaGuardiam Hoboken , Jersey City and parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Newark. According to that the bomb N. Korea just tested if dropped in the Fiancial District barely reaches Chinatown with the Thermal Radiation which would cause 3rd degree burns and possibly fires.
