A defiant North Korean President Kim Jong Un taunted “Yankees” on Wednesday after his regime launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike Alaska by saying he would continue to send “big and small ‘gift packages'” to the US.
“With a broad smile on his face,” the North Korean leader urged his scientists to “frequently send big and small ‘gift packages’ to the Yankees,” state-run media reported Wednesday.
“Feasting his eyes” on the ICBM, Kim crowed about the successful test-firing of the missile as America celebrated the Fourth of July, telling “scientists and technicians that the US would be displeased to witness the DPRK’s strategic option” on its Independence Day, the media reported, using the official acronym for North Korea.
He also said the Hermit Kingdom would continue to “demonstrate its mettle” and never put its weapons systems up for negotiation.
Kim said his government “would neither put its nukes and ballistic rockets on the table of negotiations in any case nor flinch even an inch from the road of bolstering the nuclear force chosen by itself unless the US hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated,” the Korean Central News Agency reported.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who confirmed that Kim had been able to launch an ICBM that experts say has the range to hit Alaska, said the firing represented “a new escalation of the threat” to the US and its allies in the region.
He pledged that the US would take stronger steps to curb North Korea’s persistent military provocations and put countries on notice that they would be held responsible for “aiding or abetting” Kim’s regime economically or militarily.
“Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime,” Tillerson said in a statement.
Saying the US “will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea,” Tillerson said “global action is required to stop a global threat.”
The UN Security Council is expected to meet later Wednesday on North Korea.
And the US and South Korea conducted military exercises in defiance of calls from Russia and China to halt such activity.
They launched missiles into the sea off the South Korean coast to demonstrate “deep strike precision capability,” the US military said.
The Defense Department assured allies that it was prepared to counter any threat from North Korea.
“We remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies and to use the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat from North Korea,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.
With Post wires