Kim considering ‘hardline countermeasure’
NEW YORK: Kim Jongun has described Donald Trump as ‘‘deranged’’ and Pyongyang’s foreign minister said North Korea might test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific as the recalcitrant nation hit back at the US president’s latest threats and sanctions.
Trump signed an executive order yesterday boosting the United States’ ability to sanction foreign banks, individuals and companies that facilitate trade with North Korea.
The move ‘‘will cut off sources of revenue that fund [North Korea’s] efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind,’’ Trump said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Responding to Trump’s maiden address at the UN earlier in the week, in which he threatened to ‘‘totally destroy’’ North Korea if it attacked the US or its allies, Kim Jongun issued a rare statement yesterday describing the speech as ‘‘unprecedented rude nonsense’’.
Kim said Trump’s ‘‘mentally deranged behaviour’’ and his threat to ‘‘totally destroy’’ North Korea ‘‘convinced me . . . that the path I chose is correct and that is the one I have to follow to the last’’.
Kim said Trump would ‘‘pay dearly’’ and after his ‘‘ferocious declaration’’ of war, North Korea would consider a ‘‘corres ponding, highest level of hardline countermeasure’’.
When asked by reporters in New York what the countermeasure could be, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said: ‘‘It could be the most powerful detonation of an Hbomb in the Pacific.
‘‘We have no idea about what actions could be taken, as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jongun,’’ Ri added, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
The international community has been increasing pressure on North Korea over a series of recent missile and nuclear tests, and the issue has been a major point of discussion at the UN General Assembly.
The new US order will allow Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to blacklist foreign banks that conduct or facilitate significant transactions tied to North Korean trade or with those under existing sanctions.
‘‘Foreign financial institutions are now on notice that, going forward, they can choose to do business with the United States or North Korea but not both,’’ Mnuchin said.
‘‘We call on all countries around the world to join us by cutting off all trade and financial transactions with North Korea.’’
The order also will allow the US to sanction those involved in industries, including fishing, technology, textiles and manufacturing, that finance the North Korean regime, as well as those involved in the operation of the country’s ports or in exporting and importing goods and services.
China’s foreign minister yesterday called on North Korea not to go further in a ‘‘dangerous direction’’ with its nuclear programme and said negotiations were the only way out of the crisis over its weapons development.
Wang Yi also told the UN General Assembly China was committed to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and there should be no new nuclear weapons north or south of the border, or elsewhere in Northeast Asia.
He urged the US to honour its ‘‘four ‘no’ commitment’’, a reference to an August 1 statement by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in which he said Washington did not seek the collapse or change of the North Korean Government, accelerated reunification of the peninsula, or to send its military north of the border.
South Korean President Moon Jaein yesterday called for the nuclear crisis to be handled in a stable manner, so that peace was not destroyed.
He told the General Assembly sanctions were needed to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table and force it to give up its nuclear weapons, but Seoul was not seeking North Korea’s collapse. — DPA/Reuters