North Korea conducts missile tests on an almost weekly basis while sprinkling in nuke variants almost at whim. Pyongyang also regularly threatens the U.S., and one has to wonder how much Kim Jong-un and his regime enjoy all of this. The answer is an easy one, by the looks of this photo of the leader and his associates while watching a ballistic missile launch on August 29. They are ecstatic! Nothing could thrill them more than the prospect of wiping their enemies off the map, which makes these threats all the more terrifying.
Indeed, when North Korea fired a missile over a Japanese island where the U.S. conducts military exercises, they meant business, and Kim Jong-un is further incensed over the U.N.’s harsh new sanctions leveled this week. He’s already threatened “unbearable consequences” and now doubles down with his most amplified rhetoric yet. The official, state-run KNCA news agency threw down these warnings, per The Guardian:
“The four islands of the [Japanese] archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche … Japan is no longer needed to exist near us … [The U.S. must be] beaten to death like a rabid dog [for the heinous sanctions resolution … Let’s reduce the U.S. mainland into ashes and darkness. Let’s vent our spite with mobilisation of all retaliation means which have been prepared till now.”
So, there you have it. This could be mere chest puffery. Yet considering how gleefully North Korea’s bloodlust runs and in light of how Kim Jong-un’s regime can now strap mini-nukes onto long range missiles that can reach parts of the U.S., this is all quite sobering — especially since North Korea’s latest nuclear test (its most powerful one yet) actually reshaped a freaking mountain by sinking an 85-acre area directly above the testing tunnels.
On the bright side (if there is one), President Trump is no longer actively tweeting the U.S. into war with North Korea. So, there’s that.
(Via The Guardian & Washington Post)