North Korea’s Pacific Ocean nuclear threat
Minister says nation may test hydrogen bomb as Kim ratchets up tensions with new attack on Trump
orth Korea has threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean after US President Donald Trump vowed to destroy the reclusive country, with leader Kim Jong Un promising to make a “mentally deranged” Trump pay dearly for his words.
Kim did not specify what action he would take against the United States or Trump, with whom he has traded insults over recent weeks. South Korea said it was the first direct statement of its kind by a North Korean leader.
However, Kim’s Foreign Minister, Ri Yong Ho, said in televised remarks that North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale on the Pacific Ocean.
Ri, who was talking to reporters in New York, also said he did not know Kim’s exact thoughts.
Japan, the only country ever to suffer an atomic attack, described the threat as “totally unacceptable”.
Trump said in his first address to the United Nations on Wednesday that he would “totally destroy” North Korea, a country of 26 million people, if it threatened the US and its allies, and called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.
Kim said the North would consider the “highest level of hardline countermeasure in history” against the US and that Trump’s comments had confirmed his own nuclear programme was “the correct path”.
Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on September 3 and has launched dozens of missiles this year as it accelerates a programme aimed at enabling it to target the US with a nuclear- tipped missile.
“I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” Kim said according to the KCNA state news agency.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a dotard as “an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile”.
In a separate report, KCNA made a rare criticism of official Chinese media, saying their comments on the North’s nuclear programme had damaged ties and suggested Beijing, its only major ally, had sided with Washington.
Singling out the official People’s Daily and its more nationalistic sister publication, the Global Times, KCNA said Chinese media was “openly resorting to interference in the internal affairs of another country” and driving a wedge between the two countries.
The escalating rhetoric came even as UN Secretary- General Antonio Guterres called for statesmanship to avoid “sleepwalking” into a war.
South Korea, Russia and China all urged calm.
However, the rhetoric was starting to rattle some in the international community. French Sports Minister Laura Flessel said France’s team would not travel to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea if its security cannot be guaranteed.
The 2018 Games are to be staged in Pyeongchang, just 80km from the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, the world’s most heavily armed border.
In an announcement outlining sanctions yesterday, 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 Wednesday.
Asked ahead of a lunch meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea yesterday if diplomacy was still possible, Trump nodded and said: “Why not?”
Kim Jong Un