U.S. President Donald Trump says North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and leader Kim Jong Un "won't be around much longer" if a speech Ri gave at the United Nations on September 23 echoes the thoughts of the country’s leadership.
"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!" Trump said in a tweet posted late on September 23.
With tensions already heightened over Pyongyang's recent nuclear tests, Ri told the UN General Assembly in New York on September 23 that Trump was on a "suicide mission" and that his vow to "totally destroy" North Korea if necessary had made "our rockets' visit to the entire U.S. mainland all the more inevitable."
Referring to Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the U.S. president posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today."
In his first address to the General Assembly on September 19, Trump called Kim a "rocket man" on a "suicide mission."
Ri said Trump was turning the United Nations into a "gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day," and accused him of insulting Kim.
"None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission," he said.
Ri’s barbs came on the same day U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.
The flight was the farthest north of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea that any U.S. fighter jet or bomber has flown in the 21st century, the Pentagon said.