As protests continue across the continent while U.S. President Donald Trump travels Asia, North Korea on Saturday called Trump a "destroyer of world peace and stability" who "begged for a nuclear war" during his visit to South Korea earlier this week.
"Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement to a state news agency. Reuters reports the spokesman also said that nothing would deter Pyongyang from continuing its nuclear weapons program.
In Trump's first major speech in Asia, addressing the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul on Wednesday, he personally attacked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in an apparent attempt to encourage Kim to discontinue his pursuit of nuclear weapons.
"The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger," Trump warned. "Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."
"This a very different administration than the United States has had in the past," he said. "Do not underestimate us. And do not try us."
"North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned," Trump added, referencing regime founded by Kim Il-sung. "It is a hell that no person deserves."
In response to Trump's continued provocation of the North Korean leader, the U.S. president has been met with protests across Asia. As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, amid intensifying "fears of war on the Korean Peninsula," thousands of protesters gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Seoul on Tuesday and hoisted signs that sent an unambiguous message: "shut up and get out."
Ahead of Trump's visit to the Philippines, critics gathered outside Trump Tower in Manila on Friday to denounce the president for representing "the worst aspects of U.S. imperialism." A Filipino coalition called Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, in an interview with Southeast Asia Globe, said Trump "is right now the biggest threat to regional peace with his provocations against North Korea."
