North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho responded fiercely Saturday to President Donald Trump’s warnings earlier this week.
The North Korean diplomat said that he “feels forced to make comments on someone who calls himself the U.S. president,” adding that “it’s fair enough for me to respond in the corresponding tone.”
“Trump is mentally deranged and full of megalomania,” Ri explained to the United Nations General Assembly, adding that the U.S. president is the “gravest threat to international peace and security today.” He stressed that Trump’s insults were an irreversible mistake, asserting that North Korean rockets will inevitably fall on the continental U.S. The foreign minister warned of a “merciless preemptive strike” on the U.S.
“Trump may not know what came out of his mouth, but we will make sure that we make him take responsibility for what he said,” the North Korean diplomat stressed.
“No one other than Trump is on a suicide mission,” he said, altering slightly Trump’s previous statements that “Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un is pursuing a path that will end in his destruction. Ri actually boycotted Trump’s speech, leaving behind a junior diplomat.
Repeating a regular North Korean view, Ri argued that the country is developing nuclear weapons and missiles in response to the threat from the U.S. He referred to his country’s weapons as the “nuclear hammer of justice,” calling the country’s arsenal “a righteous self-defense measure.” He praised the strategic rocket forces and the North for its development of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the U.S.
“DPRK is a responsible nuclear weapons state,” he explained, adding that the U.S. has a dark nuclear history. “US is the first country to make a nuclear weapon, world’s only country to actually use it, killing thousands of innocent civilian lives,” he said.
In an attempt to divide the U.S. and its allies, a common North Korean tactics, Ri said that North Korea will take action against the U.S. if attacked, but will not target those countries which do not fight alongside the U.S.
Trump and Kim are engaging in a war of words. “The United States is a nation of great strength and patience,” Trump said at the U.N. Tuesday, “but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” In response, the young North Korean dictator threatened to “tame the mentally-deranged dotard with fire.”
The foreign minister then suggested that North Korea might move to detonate a hydrogen bomb, like the one tested earlier this month, over the Pacific Ocean in a show of force to those who stand against the rogue regime. Early Saturday morning, the U.S. Air Force’s most powerful conventional bombers ripped past the Korean Peninsula to demonstrate American resolve.
It is “a forlorn hope to think that we will be shaken…by hostile forces,” Ri said Saturday.
The U.S. has also imposed unilateral sanctions on top of the tough United Nations sanctions to cripple North Korea’s overseas financial and procurement networks. The North Korean foreign minister announced that if the pressure gets too intense, the regime will punish those who punished it.
If sanctions reach a critical point, North Korea “will hold those [countries] accountable,” he said.
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