North Korea’s state media threatened to “bury the entirety of the U.S. under water [sic]” in a threatening column published Monday, the latest in its ongoing series of existential threats against America.
While the article does not mention it, its authors may have received inspiration for their threat from reports of continued flooding in Houston, Texas following the landing of Hurricane Harvey. The greater Houston area has suffered up to two feet of rain in the past week, with another ten inches expected to fall in coming days.
The South Korean newswire service Yonhap identifies the article in question as a column titled “Only Victory and Glory Would Lie Ahead for the Armed Forces of the Autonomous Navy,” meant to commemorate the anniversary of the establishment of the North Korean navy, reportedly published in state newspaper Rodong Sinmun. Breitbart News could not find the article on the newspaper’s home page at press time, though there can be a lag between the publication of the print and online editions.
The column dismisses the advanced technology the U.S. military has at its disposal as “nothing but a fat metamorphosed animal to the eyes of the naval forces of the Korean People’s Army.”
“The invincible naval forces are united in their feelings that they will bury the entirety of the U.S. under water if the U.S. brings in the cloud of war of aggression on this soil,” it later warns.
The threat differs from North Korea’s typical warnings in that it does not imply a military invasion or bombing. Yonhap does not indicate that the column explained its threat or suggested that it had the means to place the nation under water, the way it typically highlights its alleged nuclear might as capable of destroying entire cities. In another article posted on Rodong Sinmun‘s page today, for example, the author dismisses American military officials as “tiger moths plunging into the flame” and warns America is “digging its own grave” and faces “the miserable fate of meeting deaths in the flame kindled by themselves.” The article clearly threatens bombings if North Korea deems them appropriate.
Other North Korean threats have been even less thinly veiled. “Should the U.S. dare to show even the slightest sign of attempt to remove our supreme leadership, we will strike a merciless blow at the heart of the U.S. with our powerful nuclear hammer, honed and hardened over time,” the nation’s foreign ministry recently said in a statement. Last week, the government warned that South Korea and the United States were “driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war” by engaging in joint military exercises, as they have annually for decades.
North Korean state media have also released videos depicting nuclear attacks on Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco.
Accompanying the latest outburst in the state newspaper, North Korea published a new collection of propaganda videos on its Youtube channel. One of the videos, posted Sunday, is titled roughly “The American Bluff: Fanning the Nuclear Powder Keg of War” and features bombastic music along with depictions of North Korean military exercises.
The latest wave of propaganda follows the testing of yet more missiles – this time, what South Korean military officials are calling “short-range ballistic missiles.” Pyongyang ordered the firing of these missiles on Saturday, which rapidly collapsed into the sea. The United Nations prohibits North Korea from such military activity.
Following several weeks in which the Trump administration threatened “fire and fury” upon North Korea should they continue their belligerence, North Korea appears to have maintained its heightened rhetoric. This did not stop Secretary of State Rex Tillerson from praising North Korea last week, describing “restraint” he perceived coming from Pyongyang. “We need to see more on their part, but I want to acknowledge the steps they’ve taken thus far. I think it’s important to take note of that,” Tillerson told reporters.
Tillerson had previously asserted Americans “do not seek a regime change, we do not seek the collapse of the regime, we do not seek an accelerated reunification of the peninsula,” despite the rampant human rights abuses committed in the nation, considered among the world’s most repressive. In his remarks, he also stated, “we are not your enemy” and suggested the Trump administration “would like to sit and begin to have a dialogue,” a shocking departure from President Trump’s vow to wage “fire and fury” against dictator Kim Jong-un.
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