‘My nuke button is bigger...’

TRUMP MOCKS KIM: AS NORTH KOREA REOPENS BORDER PHONE LINE WITH THE SOUTH

Seoul says reopening hotline is significant. US sees it as bid to drive a wedge.

Seoul

North Korea reopened a long-closed border hotline with South Korea yesterday, hours after US President Donald Trump appeared to mock the North’s leader by saying he has a “bigger and more powerful” nuclear button than he does.

The North’s decision to open the border phone line came a day after South Korea proposed high-level 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 in South Korea in February.

US officials said Washington would not take any talks between North and South Korea seriously if they did not contribute to denuclearising North Korea. A State Department spokesperson 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 at 6.30pm GMT yesterday, when South Korean officials at the border received a call from the North, the South’s unification ministry said. Officials on both sides checked the line.

That gesture came only hours after Trump, who has mockingly called Kim “Little Rocket Man”, again ridiculed him 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!” Trump tweeted.

Trump and Kim have exchanged a series of bellicose comments recently, raising alarm across the world, with Trump at times dismissing the prospect of a diplomatic solution to a crisis in which North Korea has threatened to destroy the US.