North Korea's foreign minister: Trump's words are 'clearly a declaration of war'

North Korea's foreign minister warned on Monday that President Donald Trump’s rhetoric toward the country constitutes a “declaration of war,” while also threatening to shoot down U.S. warplanes operating outside North Korean airspace.

“Last weekend, Trump claimed that our leadership wouldn’t be around much longer, and hence, at last, he declared war on our country,” North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said in New York Monday. “Given the fact that this comes from someone that is currently holding the seat of the United States presidency, this is clearly a declaration of war.”


The North Korean foreign minister’s comments seemed a response to a Twitter post from Trump late Saturday night, in which the president wrote that he had “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!”

Ri said Trump’s online remark would justify North Korea in taking military action against the U.S. under the United Nations charter.

“Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make counter measures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not yet inside the airspace border of our country,” he said. “The question of who won’t be around much longer will be answered then.”

Over the weekend, U.S. bombers and fighters flew farther north of the demilitarized zone that divides the two Koreas than at any point this century, a mission a Pentagon spokesman said was intended as a “demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat.”

Ri, who spoke through a translator to reporters outside his hotel in New York, did not take questions and left immediately after delivering his statement.

Trump has met North Korea’s recent campaign of ballistic missile and nuclear device tests with harsh rhetoric, pledging never to allow the regime of Kim Jong Un to obtain a nuclear weapon capable of striking the continental U.S. and pointedly refusing to take military action off the table.

He devoted much of his speech at last week's United Nations General Assembly to warning North Korea that the U.S. would “totally destroy” it if necessary.

North Korea’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of a nuclear weapon capable of striking the continental U.S. has been met not only by condemnation from Washington but with fresh rounds of sanctions from the U.N., which notably imposed the new penalties with the support of China and Russia, the two nations that typically shield the Kim regime on the U.N. Security Council.

But North Korea has thus far remained unbowed, matching Trump’s bellicose rhetoric and appearing to carry on in its pursuit of a nuclear weapon that could threaten the western U.S. In a rare statement directly from Kim, the North Korean dictator last week said he would “tame the mentally-deranged” Trump “with fire.”

