Trump: My nuke button is bigger than Kim’s
SEOUL: North Korea reopened a long-closed border hotline with South Korea yesterday, hours after United States President Donald Trump appeared to mock the North’s leader by saying he has a “bigger and more powerful” nuclear button.
The North’s decision to open the border phone line came a day after South Korea proposed highlevel discussions amid a tense standoff over North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes.
That followed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Year address in which he said he was open to speaking with the South and would consider sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics to be held just across the border in Pyeongchang next month.
US officials said Washington would not take any talks between North and South Korea seriously if they did not contribute to denuclearising the North.
A State Department spokesman said North Korea “might be trying to drive a wedge of some sort”.
Kim ordered the reopening of the hotline at the truce village of Panmunjom when South Korean officials at the border received a call from the North, the South’s Unification Ministry said.
Officials on both sides were checking the line and conducting a conversation for about 20 minutes, the contents of which were not disclosed by the ministry.
That gesture came hours after Trump, who once mocked Kim as “Little Rocket Man”, ridiculed the North Korean leader on Twitter.
“Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
The hotline with the South was shut down by North Korea in February 2016 in retaliation against the closing of a border factory town that was jointly operated by the two Koreas.
“We will try to keep close communications with the south Korean side from sincere stand (sic) and honest attitude, true to the intention of our supreme leadership, and deal with the practical matters related to the dispatch of our delegation,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted Ri Son-gwon, chairman of North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, as saying.
The talks would aim to establish formal dialogue about sending a North Korean delegation to the Olympics, Ri said.
South Korean presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said the North’s decision to open the hotline had “significant meaning” because it could lead to constant communication.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said both sides should seize the Olympics as a chance to improve ties and make concrete efforts to alleviate tension. Reuters