N. Korea says blame a war on Don
President Trump is a “mentally deranged person full of megalomania” on a “suicide mission” that boosts the chance of a North Korean missile attack on the US, the hermit kingdom’s foreign minister said Saturday.
By labeling North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (right) “Rocket Man’’ during his UN speech last week, Trump made “our rocket’s visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more,’’ Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho blustered in his own UN address.
“Trump will be held totally responsible’’ if Americans are hurt.
Friday night Trump added “little’’ to Kim’s “Rocket man’’ title.
In a tweet posted Saturday night, Trump said, “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!’’
Meanwhile, in Pyongyang tens of thousands of slogan-chanting, banner-waving demonstrators gathered to support their leaders.
On Tuesday, Trump told world diplomats that the US would “to- tally destroy” North Korea if it threatens America or our allies.
“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself,” the president had said.
Ri countered Saturday that Trump poses “the gravest threat to international peace and security today,” adding: “Trump might not be aware what is uttered from his mouth.”
North Korea has rattled the world with repeated nuclear-missile testing, escalating tensions by firing a missile over Japan last month and threatening to test a hydrogen bomb above ground.
Speaking to reporters in New York on Friday, Ri had suggested that North Korea would test-fire an H-bomb in the Pacific in the first open-air nuke test in decades. The country’s arsenal is a “war deterrent” against the United States, Ri claimed.
Ri slammed Trump then as “lacking of basic common knowledge and proper sentiment” and said the American president “tried to insult the supreme dignity of my country by referring it to a rocket.”
Trump also brought down the UN by turning it into a “gangsters’ nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day,” Ri said. Before Ri took the UN podium, US bombers and fighter escorts flew in international airspace east of North Korea.
The planes came from Guam, and from Okinawa, Japan. The operation was meant to reflect the seriousness with which the US takes the North’s “reckless behavior,” the Pentagon said.
The military planes’ flight was a “demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat.” It was the furthest north of the Demilitarized Zone any US aircraft have flown.
“North Korea’s weapons program is a grave threat,” the Pentagon added. “We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies.”
Earlier Saturday, a small earthquake rocked North Korea near where it conducts its nuclear tests. The 3.5-magnitude quake was thought to be an aftershock from the country’s Sept. 3 bomb test, one expert said. But Lassina Zerbo, who heads the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, tweeted that it is unlikely the quake was man-made.