SEOUL, South Korea — Was it a bluff? A warning that Washington would shoot down North Korea’s next missile test? A restatement of past policy? Or simply just what it seemed: a straightforward threat of annihilation from the president of the United States?
Officials and pundits across Asia struggled Wednesday to parse Donald Trump’s vow Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly to “totally destroy North Korea” if provoked.
In a region well used to Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons generating a seemingly never-ending cycle of threats and counter-threats, Trump’s comments 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, worry, even wry amusement, in one case, that Trump’s words seemed to mirror threats normally emanating from North Korean state media.
Amid the speculation, the focus of Trump’s belligerence, North Korea, remained silent in the hours after the speech.
Officials from the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who has advocated dialogue with the North while being forced into a hawkish position by the North’s weapons tests, called Trump’s words a signal of Washington’s strong resolve to deal with the North, but also essentially a repetition of the basic stance that all options will be considered when confronting Pyongyang.
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 U.S. ally Japan.
Park Soo-hyun, a Moon spokesman, said that Trump’s comments “reaffirmed the need to put maximum sanctions and pressure against North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations” so that Pyongyang realizes that abandoning its nuclear weapons is the only way forward.
Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in an online post that Trump’s threat will feed a long-standing North Korean narrative that claims that the United States poses an existential threat.
North Korea’s regular weapons tests are an attempt to create an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can threaten U.S. troops throughout Asia and the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang tested its first two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and claims that it can now accurately reach the U.S. homeland, though outside experts say the North may still need more tests before its weapons are fully viable. Each new test pushes the nation that much closer to that goal.