[Yonhap News Photo]
U.S. President Donald Trump stepped up his rhetoric against North Korea, slammed it as a "hell", and warned that its push for the development of nuclear weapons and missiles would put the regime "in great danger".
Speaking at South Korea's parliament, Trump urged every nation, and even China and Russia, to implement U.N. Security Council resolutions and sever trade and other ties with North Korea to isolate the brutal regime.
"It is our responsibility and our duty to confront this danger together," he said. "Because the longer we wait, the greater the danger grows and the fewer the options become," he said before leaving for China.
Trump condemned the North's dire human rights situation and drew a stark contrast between the Koreas, arguing South Korea's economic growth proves that North Korea's experiment has failed.
"North Korea is a country ruled by a cult. At the center of this military cult is a deranged belief in the ruler's destiny to rule as a parent protector over a conquered Korean Peninsula," Trump said. "The more successful South Korea becomes the more successfully you discredit the dark fantasy at the heart of the South Korean regime."
Trump delivered a message directly to the leader of North Korea's "dictatorship". "The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer. They are putting your regime in great danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."
"North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned. It is a hell that no person deserves," Trump said. "Far from valuing its people as equal citizens, this cruel dictatorship measures them, scores them, and ranks them based on the most arbitrary indications of their allegiance to the state."
North Korea's provocative action will lead to a "fatal miscalculation", Trump said, portraying himself as a leader who is more willing than previous US presidents to use military if Pyongyang continues to threaten the United States and its allies.
"The regime has interpreted America's past restraint as weakness. This would be a fatal miscalculation," he said. "This a very different administration than the United States has had in the past," Trump said. "Do not underestimate us. And do not try us."
Trump, however, left open the possibility of engagement. "We will offer a path to a much better future. It begins with an end to the aggression of your regime, a stop to your development of ballistic missiles, and complete, verifiable, and total denuclearization."
reporter
Lim Chang-won
cwlim34@ajunews.com
