North Korea said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to destroy the reclusive country, with leader Kim Jong Un promising to make a "mentally d
eranged" Trump pay dearly for his threats.
Kim
did not specify what action he would take against the United States or
Trump, with whom he has traded insults over recent weeks. South Korea
said it was the first direct statement of its kind by a North Korean
leader.
However,
Kim's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said in televised remarks 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, also said he did not know Kim's exact thoughts.
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 U.S. dotard with
fire," Kim said in the statement carried by the KCNA state news agency.
"SLEEPWALKING INTO WAR"
In
a separate report, KCNA made a rare criticism of official Chinese
media, saying their comments on the North's nuclear program had damaged
ties and suggested Beijing, its only major ally, had sided with
Washington.
Singling
out the official People's Daily and its more nationalistic sister
publication, the Global Times, KCNA said Chinese media was "openly
resorting to interference in the internal affairs of another country"
and driving a wedge between the two countries.
The
escalating rhetoric came even as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres called for statesmanship to avoid "sleepwalking" into a war.
South Korea, Russia and China all urged calm.
However,
the rhetoric was starting to rattle some in the international
community. French Sports Minister Laura Flessel said France's team would
not travel to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea if its
security cannot be guaranteed.
The
2018 Games are to be staged in Pyeongchang, just 80 km (50 miles) from
the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the world's most
heavily armed border.
Asian
stocks fell and the Japanese yen and Swiss franc gained on the
possibility of a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific. [MKTS/GLOB]
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan handed back earlier gains and was down 0.4 percent.
MORE TIME
In
his sanctions announcement on Thursday, Trump stopped short of going
after Pyongyang's biggest trading partner, China, praising as
"tremendous" a move by its central bank ordering Chinese banks to stop
doing business with North Korea.
The
additional sanctions on Pyongyang, including on its shipping and trade
networks, showed that Trump was giving more time for economic pressures
to weigh on North Korea after warning about the possibility of military
action on Tuesday.
Asked
ahead of a lunch meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea on
Thursday if diplomacy was still possible, Trump nodded and said: "Why
not?"
Trump
said the new executive order on sanctions gives further authorities to
target individual companies and institutions that finance and facilitate
trade with North Korea.
It
"will cut off sources of revenue that fund North Korea's efforts to
develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind", Trump said.
The
U.S. Treasury Department now had authority to target those that conduct
"significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea".
Trump did not mention Pyongyang's oil trade.
The
White House said North Korea's energy, medical, mining, textiles, and
transportation industries were among those targeted and that the U.S.
Treasury could sanction anyone who owns, controls or operates a port of
entry in North Korea.
"ON NOTICE"
U.S.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said banks doing business in North
Korea would not be allowed to operate in the United States as well.
"Foreign
financial institutions are now on notice that going forward they can
choose to do business with the United States or with North Korea, but
not both," Mnuchin said.
The
U.N. Security Council has unanimously imposed nine rounds of sanctions
on North Korea since 2006, the latest this month capping fuel supplies
to the isolated state.
South
Korean President Moon Jae-in, who addressed the U.N. General Assembly,
said sanctions were needed to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table,
but Seoul was not seeking North Korea's collapse.
"All
of our endeavors are to prevent war from breaking out and maintain
peace," Moon said in his speech. He warned the nuclear issue had to be
managed stably so that "accidental military clashes will not destroy
peace".
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.
(THE REUTERS)
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