Kim Jong-un’s talks with South Korea drown out Trump nuclear button bluster (2024)

An emerging détente between North and South Korea complicated US efforts to isolate Pyongyang yesterday, even as President Trump taunted Kim Jong-un over the size of his nuclear arsenal, saying that his own “nuclear button” was “much bigger and more powerful”.

Mr Trump’s remarks provoked alarm among the Democrats, who urged the Republicans to join them in passing a measure requiring him to obtain approval from Congress before launching a nuclear first strike on North Korea in the absence of an immediate threat.

Pyongyang yesterday reinstated a hotline with South Korea after two years, a move that signalled improved relations that may test the South’s alliance with the US.

Previous combative tweets from Mr Trump have given rise to the idea that he could be mimicking Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” — making a deliberate show of recklessness to buttress fears that he might use nuclear force. However, American analysts were largely critical of the latest outburst. Eliot Cohen, a former state department counsellor under George W Bush, said he was acting “like a petulant ten-year-old, but one with nuclear weapons”.

Jim Himes, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, told CNN: “I guess the president regards this as a show of strength. But it’s usually the person who’s most aggressively pounding their chest that is, in fact, the weak one on the playground.”

Two days after Kim called for talks between Pyongyang and Seoul, North Korean state television announced the resumption of direct communication across the border. The Kim regime stopped responding to communications on the hotline in February 2016, during a period of tension over nuclear and missile tests.

Ri Son-gwon, the senior North Korean official in charge of relations with Seoul, said: “We will make close contact with South Korea in a sincere and faithful manner. We will discuss working-level issues over our potential dispatch of the delegation.”

A spokesman for President Moon of South Korea, whose appeals for talks with the North have previously been ignored, welcomed the announcement. The spokesman said that it “creates an environment where communication will be possible at all times”. South Korea had earlier proposed talks on North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics, which it will host next month.

Kim’s new year speech, in which he called for improved relations and renewed contacts between North and South, has given rise to an atmosphere of cautious optimism after one of the most tense and difficult years on the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean War. The North’s continued testing of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles and its claim to have the mainland US withinrange of a nuclear strike — as well as dark hints of a pre-emptive attack issued by Mr Trump — have provoked fears of war.

Kim’s new tone suggests that having achieved, as he claims, full nuclear capability, he is willing to consider diplomatic options. “Our country’s nuclear forces are capable of thwarting and countering any nuclear threats from the United States,” he said in his speech on Monday. “The whole of its mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time; the United States needs to be clearly aware that this is not merely a threat but a reality.”

Security hawks in the US oppose any negotiation with the North until it commits to getting rid of its nuclear weapons; a step that Mr Kim has firmly ruled out. On Tuesday Mr Trump offered two responses on Twitter, the first of which suggested that he was not opposed to talks between North and South. “Sanctions and ‘other’ pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea,” he wrote. “Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea.” He added that “Rocket man” — his derisive nickname for Kim — “now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not — we will see!”

By Tuesday evening he had adopted a more confrontational tone. “Kim just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times’,” he wrote. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

The codes with which a US president could launch a nuclear attack are contained in a briefcase, the so-called “nuclear football”, which is carried at all times by an aide. Some users of social media criticised Mr Trump’s boast as childish and reckless.