While Trump is greeted by protesters across the continent, North Korea says he has “laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability”
As protests continue across the continent while U.S. President Donald Trump travels Asia, North Korea on Saturday called Trump a “destroyer of world peace and stability” who “begged for a nuclear war” during his visit to South Korea earlier this week.
“Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula,” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement to a state news agency. Reuters reports the spokesman also said that nothing would deter Pyongyang from continuing its nuclear weapons program.
In Trump’s first major speech in Asia, addressing the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul on Wednesday, he personally attacked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in an apparent attempt to encourage Kim to discontinue his pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger,” Trump warned. “Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face.”
“This a very different administration than the United States has had in the past,” he said. “Do not underestimate us. And do not try us.”
“North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned,” Trump added, referencing regime founded by Kim Il-sung. “It is a hell that no person deserves.”
In response to Trump’s continued provocation of the North Korean leader, the U.S. president has been met with protests across Asia. As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, amid intensifying “fears of war on the Korean Peninsula,” thousands of protesters gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Seoul on Tuesday and hoisted signs that sent an unambiguous message: “shut up and get out.”
Ahead of Trump’s visit to the Philippines, critics gathered outside Trump Tower in Manila on Friday to denounce the president for representing “the worst aspects of U.S. imperialism.” A Filipino coalition called Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, in an interview with Southeast Asia Globe, said Trump “is right now the biggest threat to regional peace with his provocations against North Korea.”
Top photo | Members of “No Trump Coalition” hurl salt at a banner showing images of the U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally against his visit in front of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 8, 2017. (AP/Ahn Young-joon)
Common Dreams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
The recent devastating car bombing in Mogadishu has been blamed by Somali officials on the terrorist group al-Shabab. But the violence (and famine) that have beset Somalia have deeper roots — decades of imperialism and intervention, and use of Somalia as a staging grounds for the “war on terror.”
Buried among statistics on gun profits and lobbying efforts is the terrifying reality of just how unique America’s gun obsession and associated violence are. And the equally terrifying plan by the NRA to “normalize” gun possession in nearly every nook and cranny of American life.
U.S. campaigns for regime change characteristically focus on the “madness” of the “dictators” to be toppled. In the case of North Korea, the narrative is spiced by the country’s developing nuclear capabilities — which North Korea views as its main line of defense against . . . regime change.
Aung Su Kyi, the leader of Myanmar, has been accused of “legitimizing genocide” against the country’s Rohingya Muslims, despite being a Nobel Prize laureate. Her country’s military has massacred thousands of Rohingya, leading some to call for Kyi’s Nobel Prize to be revoked.
