North Korea's chilling warning to US just weeks before Trump takes office
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has threatened to implement the "toughest" anti-US policy as Donald Trump prepares for his second term as president. Trump's return to the White House raises prospects for high-profile diplomacy with North Korea. During his first term, he met Kim three times for talks on the North's nuclear programme. But many experts say a quick resumption of Kim-Trump summitry is unlikely as Trump will first focus on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. North Korea's support for Russia's war against Ukraine also poses a challenge to efforts to revive diplomacy, experts say.
During a five-day plenary meeting of the ruling Workers' Party that ended on Friday, Kim called the US "the most reactionary state that regards anti-communism as its invariable state policy", the country's state media reported. Kim said the US-South Korea-Japan security partnership is expanding into "a nuclear military bloc for aggression".
"This reality clearly shows to which direction we should advance and what we should do and how," he said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. It said his speech "clarified the strategy for the toughest anti-US counteraction to be launched aggressively" by North Korea for its long-term national interests and security.
KCNA did not elaborate on the anti-US strategy, but it said Kim set out tasks to bolster military capability through defence technology advancements and stressed the need to improve the mental toughness of North Korean soldiers. The previous meetings between Trump and Kim had not only put an end to their exchanges of fiery rhetoric and threats of destruction, but they developed personal connections.
