(CNN) The last 24 hours have seen a rapid ramping-up of the rhetoric coming out of the White House toward North Korea's rogue regime. "They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before," President Trump warned late Tuesday, just hours after reports surfaced that North Korea had developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead. The possibility of war on the Korean peninsula suddenly seemed much more real. I reached out to Elise Hu, NPR's Asia correspondent, who is based in Seoul for an on-the-ground perspective of the situation. (Make sure to check out her amazing "Elise Tries" video series here.) Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below.

Cillizza: In the last 48 hours, it feels like the likelihood of a war on the Korean peninsula has surged. Does it feel that way in South Korea?

Hu: In a word, "nope." When we interviewed some folks around town today of different ages, the response from younger people — twenties and thirties — was sometimes, "What Trump statement are you talking about?"

South Koreans are news savvy and have certainly seen many headlines, but fiery rhetoric — especially from North Korea — is something everyone here is used to. This is a country that's lived under the existential threat of North Korea for decades, so the new ICBM capabilities and the war of words that Americans are getting tense about doesn't translate over here in the same way.

On Korean Twitter today, the trending topic was the possibility of an extra week of summer break.

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