North Korea May Consider H-Bomb Test in Pacific, Kim Calls Trump 'Mentally Deranged'
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – North Korea said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb on the Pacific Ocean after US President Donald Trump vowed to destroy the country, with leader Kim Jong Un promising to make a “mentally deranged” Trump pay dearly for his threats.
Kim, who has traded ever-more heightened rhetoric with Trump, did not specify what his response would be. His comments were believed to be the first direct message ever issued by a North Korean leader, Reuters reported.
However, Kim’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale on the Pacific Ocean.
Ri, who was talking to reporters in New York ahead of a planned address later this week, however also said he did not know Kim’s exact thoughts, according to the report.
Japan, the only country ever to suffer an atomic attack, described the threat as “totally unacceptable”.
Trump said in his first address to the United Nations on Tuesday he would “totally destroy” North Korea, a country of 26 million people, if it threatened the United States and its allies, and called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.
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 own nuclear program was “the correct path”.
Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3 and has launched dozens of missiles this year as it accelerates a program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.
“I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” Kim said in the statement carried by the KCNA state news agency, referring to Trump.
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.