We’ll wipe out Kim the tyrant
World responds to Kim rocket blast Trump warns ‘all options’ are open
MILITARY chiefs have threatened to “exterminate” dictator Kim Jong-un after North Korea fired a missile over Japan.
The warning from South Korea came as US President Donald Trump said “all options are on the table” for a response to the launch.
The ballistic missile fired early yesterday was believed to be powerful enough to potentially carry a nuclear warhead – edging the tinderbox region closer to the brink.
South Korea responded with a bombing drill near the demarcation zone separating the two countries, broadcast live on TV.
Four F-15K fighter jets dropped eight MK-84 bunker-buster bombs, weighing about a ton each, at a simulated target in Gangwon.
The South said the display was intended to show its capability to “punish” its northern neighbour.
In the broadcast Colonel Lee Kuk-no warned: “If North Korea threatens the security of the South Korean people and the South KoreaUS alliance with their nuclear weapons and missiles, our air forces will exterminate the leadership of North Korea with our strong strike capabilities.”
Donald Trump, who earlier this months threatened the pariah state with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”, said the world “has received North Korea’s message loud and clear”.
He said Kim’s regime had “signalled its contempt for its neighbours, for all members of the United Nations and for minimum standards of acceptable international behaviour”.
He added: “Threatening and destabilising actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all
nations of the world. All options are on the table.” The White House said the President spoke on the phone to Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and they agreed North Korea “poses a grave and growing direct threat” to the US, Japan and South Korea.
Branding the test an “unprecedented” threat to his country, Mr Abe said: “We will do our utmost to protect people’s lives. This reckless act of launching a missile that flies over our country is an unprecedented, serious and important threat.”
Theresa May will hold crisis talks in Japan where she is expected to meet Mr Abe today. She is due to arrive in Kyoto early this morning for a planned trade mission, which will now be dominated by the escalating crisis.
Mrs May said last night: “This action by North Korea is a reckless provocation. These are illegal tests and we strongly condemn them.” A Downing Street spokeswoman said the PM was “outraged” by the missile firing and wanted the United Nations to pile pressure on the regime as it develops its nuclear programme.
Japan is Britain’s “closest security partner” in the region, the spokeswoman stressed. She added: “We are willing to continue to work with our international partners to keep the pressure on North Korea.”
An emergency session of the UN
Security Council in New York is expected to consider “new sanction measures” to rein in the crackpot regime, UK officials said.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned North Korea’s launch, which “undermines regional security and stability”, a spokeswoman said.
Even China, the rogue state’s lone ally, signalled growing impatience with the regime. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the crisis was “approaching a critical juncture”. But North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, Han Tae-song, said tensions were being driven by America. Joint US-South Korea military drills in the region are part of “long-standing US hostile policy” towards North Korea, he claimed.
He added: “The US is driving the situation of the Korean peninsula towards an extreme level of explosion by deploying huge strategic assets around the peninsula, by conducting a series of nuclear war drills and maintaining nuclear freeze and blackmail for over half a century.
“Now that the US has openly declared its hostile intention towards the Demomajor cratic People’s Republic of Korea, by waging aggressive joint military exercises despite repeated warnings... my country has every reason to respond with tough counter-measures as an exercise of its right to self defence.
“The US should be wholly responsible for the catastrophic consequences.”
The rocket flew an estimated 1,677 miles passing over the island of Hokkaido before crashing into the Pacific.
Thought to be a newly developed Hwasong-12 intermediate range missile, it was believed to be the first fired from North Korea over Japan since 2009.
Japanese citizens were told to take shelter as air raid sirens blared, but the military did not attempt to bring down the missile.
Russia relocated 1,500 people from its 24-mile border with North Korea after the missile launch, it was reported yesterday. However, the relocation was later described as a “training exercise”.