Trump orders new sanctions against N.Korea, Kim calls him “deranged”

NEW YORK, (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump ordered new sanctions against North Korea on Thursday and Pyongyang’s leader defiantly vowed to persist with its nuclear and missile programs and said it would consider measures against the United States.

Tensions have risen as Pyongyang has resisted intense international pressure and the rhetoric between Trump and Kim Jong Un has also escalated. The U.S. president on Tuesday called him a ‘rocket man’ on a suicide mission and Kim described Trump early on Friday in Asia as “mentally deranged”.

The escalating rhetoric came as even the U.N. Secretary General called for statesmanship to avoid “sleepwalking” into a war. South Korea, Russia and China all urged calm.

Kim said the North would consider the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States in response to Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” the North in his first speech to the United Nations on Tuesday.

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3 and has launched numerous missiles this year, including two intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Under Kim, North Korea has launched dozens of missiles as it accelerates a program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

In his sanctions announcement on Thursday, Trump stopped short of going after Pyongyang’s biggest trading partner, China, praising as “tremendous” a move by its central bank ordering Chinese banks to stop doing business with North Korea.

The additional sanctions on Pyongyang, including on its shipping and trade networks, showed that Trump was giving more time for economic pressures to weigh on North Korea after warning about the possibility of military action on Tuesday in his first speech to the United Nations.