President Donald Trump said North Korea has been "behaving very badly" as his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was visiting South Korea. | Getty Trump: North Korea has been 'playing' the U.S. for years

President Donald Trump said Friday that North Korea has been “behaving very badly” and “’playing’ the United States for years,” a comment on Twitter that came just hours after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested the possibility of a preemptive strike against the repressive regime.

“North Korea is behaving very badly,” Trump wrote in a post to Twitter Friday morning. “They have been ‘playing’ the United States for years. China has done little to help!”


Speaking Friday during his first visit to South Korea as America’s top diplomat, the Associated Press reported that Tillerson said “all of the options are on the table,” including the use of military force, when it comes to U.S. policy towards North Korea. A preemptive strike, Tillerson said, could be appropriate should North Korea’s nuclear missile program escalate to a level “that we believe requires action."

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Trump has promised a get-tough approach on foreign policy and has pledged that North Korea will not accomplish its goal of obtaining a nuclear missile capable of hitting the U.S. During Friday’s visit, which included a trip to the demilitarized zone along the border between the two Koreas, Tillerson promised a “different approach” from the U.S. towards North Korea and said that two decades of "diplomatic and other efforts" had failed to halt the “ever-escalating threat” of its nuclear ambitions.