North Korea threatens to destroy US, Japan

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL (AA) - North Korea has called for the U.S. to be "reduced to ashes" and Japan to be "sunk" in the wake of new sanctions targeting the reclusive state’s nuclear weapon ambitions.

Pyongyang was punished through oil trade restrictions among other measures adopted by the United Nations Security Council after the North’s most powerful nuke test to date on Sept. 3.

However, North Korea remains defiant as its state-run KCNA news agency carried a statement from the authoritarian regime’s foreign relations body dated Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Pyongyang’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee insisted the nation’s people are demanding that the U.S. “be beaten to death as a stick is fit for a rabid dog”.

“Now is the time to annihilate the U.S. imperialist aggressors. Let's reduce the U.S. mainland into ashes and darkness,” the English-language statement read, adding that Japan is yet to “come to senses” after the North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile over the country last month.

“(Japan) should be sunken into the sea,” the spokesman went on, also suggesting that “puppet forces in South Korea should be “wiped out” for the sake of the Korean Peninsula’s “proud reunification”.

The South, under the guidance of liberal President Moon Jae-in since May, has failed in its attempts so far to engage North Korea in dialogue and cooperation.

However, Seoul’s Unification Ministry revealed Thursday that the government is mulling over whether to provide the North with $8 million in aid despite sanctions.

South Korea’s position is that humanitarian support can be separated from piling pressure on Pyongyang through the Security Council measures.

Amid reports of a rift with Tokyo over the issue, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck was quoted by local news agency Yonhap as maintaining that the South has been in “close consultation with countries such as the U.S. and Japan on our government's basic stance on humanitarian aid and other overall policies related to the North”.