Beijing urges restraint over Washington, Pyongyang row

Japan’s Abe announces snap election amid ‘national crisis’

CHINA yesterday called for all sides in the North Korea missile crisis to show restraint and not “add oil to the flames” amid an exchange of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between U.S. President Donald Trump and Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korean Foreign Minister, Ri Yong Ho, told the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on Saturday that targeting the U.S. mainland with its rockets was inevitable after “Mr. Evil President” Trump called Pyongyang’s leader a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.

“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!” Trump added on Twitter late on Saturday.

North Korea, which has pursued its missile and nuclear programs in defiance of international condemna- tion, said it “bitterly condemned the reckless remarks” of the U.S. president, saying they were an “intolerable insult to the Korean people” and a declaration of war, the North’s official news agency said yesterday.

In an unprecedented direct statement on Friday, Kim described Trump as a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” whom he would tame with fire. Kim said the North would consider the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States and that Trump’s comments had confirmed his nuclear program was “the correct path”.

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe disclosed he would dissolve parliament’s lower house on Thursday for a snap election, as he seeks a fresh mandate to overcome “a national crisis”.