It is not easy to guess what North Korea is thinking when it threatens nuclear war against the South while permitting an unimpeded border crossing by employees of South Korean corporations operating factories in the North. Nor is it easy to make sense of where South Korea stands when it says it is preparing to propose dialogue and family reunions to the North while threatening a counterattack on any North Korean hostility, be it conventional or nuclear.

North Korea has been ramping up its nuclear threats against South Korea and the United States since it conducted its third nuclear test on Feb. 12, making bellicose remarks without restraint. But its sanity is called into question when it says conditions are created for an “imminent nuclear war” and that its military action will include a “sovereignty-protecting preemptive nuclear attack.”

On hearing the highly provocative and normally unimaginable remarks, China says, “We hope that relevant parties will exercise restraint so as to ease the tension.” But shouldn’t it have admonished the runaway communist state for its loose tongue as its sole military ally, before calling on all parties concerned to calm down?

On Tuesday when a ceremony was held in South Korea to remember the victims of North Korea’s 2010 torpedo attack on a South Koran corvette, Pyongyang said it was notifying the U.N. Security Council that U.S. and South Korean nuclear provocations had created the “conditions for an imminent nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.” It said it had put on the highest alert its missile and long-range artillery units targeting U.S. military bases on the mainland, Hawaii and Guam as well as military facilities in South Korea.

Pyongyang continued its nuclear threat on Wednesday, laying claim to a right to a preemptive nuclear attack for the protection of its sovereignty. It said its “real military action will include our powerful sovereignty-protecting preemptive nuclear attack.”

On the same day, Pyongyang closed military channels of communication with the South, one of which it had used to guarantee the safety of South Korean commuters to the Gaeseong industrial park across the border. It cited what it called increasing U.S. nuclear threats for closing all four channels of communication in use on the west coast. With the four others made inoperative either by a wild fire in the mountain or by a North Korean decision, the two sides have no open military channel of communication now.

When Pyongyang was heightening tension by threatening a nuclear war and cut off the military hotlines, South Korea said it was preparing to propose a reunion of separated families and reopen a long-stalled dialogue to the North. Was it out of its mind when it made those remarks?

Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said Wednesday that South Korea would propose inter-Korean dialogue and a reunion of split families at a time deemed appropriate under President Park Geun-hye’s policy initiative of building trust with North Korea. He said South Korea would remain open to dialogue at any time.

Ryoo made these remarks after reporting to Park what measures he would take for her three-stage process of trust building. Her initiative envisions the buildup of trust by offering humanitarian aid for the North in the first stage, a low level of aid, as in agriculture and forestation, in the second stage, and finally large-scale investments in social and economic infrastructure in return for denuclearization.

What was disconcerting about Ryoo’s forthcoming proposal, however, was that he made no mention of any strings that would be attached with regard to North Korea’s threat to security. This is not to say he did not mention national security. He did mention it when he said he would strike a “balance between national security and inter-Korean economic cooperation” (a euphemism for South Korean aid for the North) and pursue a phased buildup of inter-Korean trust.

But the problem with Ryoo’s proposal is that he will have no one but himself to blame if it is denounced as a policy of appeasement. It is all the more so, given that calls for inter-Korean dialogue or a family reunion have usually been sweetened with aid in the past.

The Park administration tries to walk a tightrope between the promotion of dialogue and a push for denuclearization. But that is easier said than done, given North Korea’s refusal to make good on its past denuclearization promise.