Talk politics.

Put any country leader (Barak Obama for example) in place of Kim Jong Il -- and this sentence will still be true. The only difference is in scale. USA says "give me more resources -- oil, cheap workers, minerals etc), and have a lot of nuclear weapons already. Nothing changes in general. This is a major rule of the politics (AFAIR). You're strong -- and you rule. You're weak -- and you're ruled. DPRK is strong, while ROK is weak.
DPRK is a subject of global politics, ROK is just an object of it.