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Trump dials up North Korea threats
AS North Korea staged a major anti-US rally at the weekend, US President Donald Trump again dialled up the rhetoric, warning the country’s foreign minister that he and leader Kim Jong Un “won’t be around much longer.”
North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable after “Mr Evil President” Trump called North Korea’s leader a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.
Late on Saturday, Trump tweeted: “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 and Kim have traded increasingly threatening and personal insults as North Korea races toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States — something Trump has vowed to prevent.
Analysts say the escalation in rhetoric is increasing the risk of a miscalculation by one side or the other that could have massive repercussions.
North Korea’s KRT television aired a video yesterday showing tens of thousands of people attending an anti-US rally at Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang.
North Korea’s KCNA news agency said more than 100,000 people gathered for the rally on Saturday and delivered speeches supporting comments made by Kim earlier in the week.
“We are waiting for the right time to have a final battle with the US, the evil empire, and to remove the US from the world,” KCNA quoted Ri Il-bae, a commanding officer of the Red Guards, as saying. “Once respected Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un gives an order, we will annihilate the group of aggressors.”
In a direct statement on Friday, Kim described Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard” whom he would tame with fire.
Kim said North Korea would consider the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the US and that Trump’s comments had confirmed his nuclear program was “the correct path.”
Kim’s comments came after Trump threatened in his maiden UN address last Thursday to “totally destroy” the country.
North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb test on September 3, prompting another round of UN sanctions. Pyongyang said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
“It is only a forlorn hope to consider any chance that North Korea would be shaken an inch or change its stance due to the harsher sanctions by the hostile forces,” Ri told the UN General Assembly on Saturday.
US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighters flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday in a show of force the Pentagon said indicated the range of military options available to Trump.
The US and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean war ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.
North Korea accuses the US, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning to invade.
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