U.S. President Donald Trump dialled up the
rhetoric against North Korea again at the weekend, warning the country’s
foreign minister that he and leader Kim Jong Un “won’t be around much longer”,
as Pyongyang staged a major anti-U.S. rally.
North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations
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 U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little
Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!” Trump said on Twitter late on
Saturday.
Trump and
Kim have traded increasingly threatening and personal insults as Pyongyang
races towards 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 state-run television KRT aired a video on Sunday showing tens of
thousands of people attending an anti-U.S. rally at Kim Il Sung square in
Pyongyang.
The North’s
official 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.
Trump will 'do everything' to avoid nuclear
war with North Korea: Mnuchin
Trump will 'do everything' to avoid nuclear
war with North Korea: Mnuchin
“We are
waiting for the right time to have a final battle with the U.S., the evil
empire, and to remove the U.S. 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 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
programme was “the correct path”.
Kim’s
comments came after Trump threatened in his maiden UN address on Thursday to
“totally destroy” the country of 26 million people.
It was not
clear from Trump’s latest tweet if he was referring to Ri and Kim, or North
Korea more broadly.
North Korea
conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb test on Sept. 3, prompting
another round of U.N. 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 the DPRK (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.
U.S. 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 U.S.
bombers’ flight was the farthest north of the demilitarized zone separating
North and South Korea that any U.S. fighter jet or bomber had flown in the 21st
century, the Pentagon said.
The patrols
came after officials and experts said a small earthquake near North Korea’s
nuclear test site on Saturday was probably not man-made, easing fears Pyongyang
had exploded another nuclear bomb just weeks after its previous one.
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The United
States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because
the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.
The North
accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning
to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies.
News
Source: - Reuters | September 24, 2017.
Photo Source: - Reuters | September 23, 2017.
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