Was it a bluff? A warning that Washington would shoot down North Korea’s next missile test? A simple restatement of past policy?
Officials and pundits across Asia yesterday struggled to decode US President Donald Trump’s threat to “totally destroy North Korea” if provoked.
However, there was no immediate comment from the focus of Trump’s belligerence: North Korea held its tongue in the hours after the US president’s speech.
In a region well used to North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and counter threats, Trump’s comments on Tuesday at the UN General Assembly stood out.
South Korea officially played them down, while some politicians worried that Trump’s words signaled a loss of influence for Seoul.
Tokyo focused on his mention of Japanese citizens abducted by the North.
Analysts across Asia expressed surprise, even wry amusement, in one case, that Trump’s words seemed to mirror threats normally emanating from North Korean state media.
Officials from the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in called Trump’s words a signal of Washington’s strong resolve to deal with the North, but essentially a repetition of a basic US policy.
Trump has previously threatened the North with “fire and fury.”
Pyongyang responded to those past remarks with a string of weapons tests, including its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation and two missiles that flew over US ally Japan.
Trump’s comments “reaffirmed the need to put maximum sanctions and pressure against North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations,” so that Pyongyang realizes denuclearization is the only way forward for the future, South Korean presidential spokesman Park Soo-hyun said.
Some South Korean opposition politicians saw the comments as another sign that Seoul is losing its voice in international efforts to deal with the North’s nuclear program.
Trump’s UN speech came days after US Secretary of Defense James Mattis created unease in South Korea by saying without elaboration that the US has military options against North Korea that would not involve the destruction of the South Korean capital.
“Our defense ministry said there has been no communication with the US defense secretary regarding his remark. It also appears there was no prior communication with President Trump before he made the comments about the total destruction of North Korea,” said Kim Su-min, a lawmaker and spokeswoman of the People’s Party.
There is concern whether the communication channel with the US is working properly, Kim said.
“The government should comprehensively review its diplomatic and national security system, and do its absolute best so that our stance on critical issues related to the existence of our country and the lives of our people doesn’t go ignored,” Kim added.
A Chinese expert on Pyongyang was surprised by the vehemence of Trump’s speech, saying “his rhetoric is full of military force.”
“When I first listened to his remarks last night, it sounded as if the US had nearly declared war on North Korea,” Renmin University associate professor of international relations Cheng Xiaohe (成曉河) said in an interview.
The speech signals that “if North Korea conducts another missile test, the US is very likely to intercept,” Cheng said.
Officials in Tokyo welcomed a reference by Trump in his speech to North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.
“I think it means an understanding has gotten through” to the US and other nations, Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura said, according to Kyodo News service. “We earned understanding from President Trump.”
Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in South Korea, described Trump’s threats as similar to the type of bluffing that North Korea has used for decades.
“It’s a bit funny to see how the US president behaves in exactly the same way, using exactly the same words his North Korean counterparts have been using for decades,” Lankov said.
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