Do not try us, Trump warns Kim
SEOUL – US President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday, telling him that the nuclear weapons he is developing “are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger.”
“Do not underestimate us and do not try us,” Trump told North Korea as he wrapped up a visit to South Korea with a speech to the National Assembly in Seoul.
Trump used some of his toughest language yet against North Korea in a wide-ranging address that lodged specific accusations of chilling human rights abuses against Pyongyang. He called on countries around the world to isolate Pyongyang by denying it “any form of support, supply or acceptance.”
Trump painted a dystopian picture of North Korea, saying people were suffering in “gulags” and some bribed government officials to work as “slaves” overseas rather than live under the government at home. He offered no evidence to support those accusations.
Trump’s return to harsh, uncompromising language against North Korea came a day after he appeared to dial back the bellicose rhetoric that had fueled fears across east Asia of the risk of military conflict. On Tuesday, Trump had even offered a diplomatic opening to Pyongyang to “make a deal.”
He went mostly on the attack in Wednesday’s speech but did promise a “path to a much better future” for North Korea if it stopped developing ballistic missiles and agreed to “complete, verifiable and total denuclearization” – something Pyongyang has vowed never to do.
“We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated,” he told South Korean lawmakers. “And we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here, on this ground we fought and died to secure.”
“The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens it with nuclear devastation,” Trump said, speaking as three US aircraft carrier groups sailed to the Western Pacific for exercises – a rare show of such US naval force in the region. ‘GRAVE DANGER’
Aiming his words directly at Kim, Trump insisted: “The weapons that you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.”
However Trump, whose strategy has stressed sanctions and military pressure instead of diplomacy, did not spell out any new approach to force North Korea to abandon its missile and weapons programs.
North Korea has made clear it has little interest in negotiations at least until it develops a nucleartipped missile capable of hitting the US mainland, something US intelligence officials say it may be just months away from achieving.
“North Korea is a country ruled by a cult,” Trump said in a speech that was interrupted several times by applause and ended with a standing ovation.
He stopped short, however, of repeating the derisive nickname “little Rocket Man” that he has used to describe the young North Korean leader.
Kim, for his part, has called Trump “mentally deranged.”
Trump’s earlier threats to “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened the United States, and the personal insults he exchanged with Kim after the North’s most recent missile and nuclear tests, had raised fears in the region of a potential spiral into war.