North Korea has sent an unprecedented open letter to the leaders of the West urging them to unite against President Donald Trump.
The ‘rogue’ state has urged ‘sharp vigilance’ against the ‘heinous and reckless’ American leader. They have also officially announced the emergence of DPRK as a ‘fully fledged nuclear power’.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the letter was written by North Korea’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and was sent to a bunch of Western countries via covert means.
The existence of the letter was confirmed by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who received the letter from Australia’s Indonesian embassy, who were given the letter by the North Korean consulate in Jakarta.
Bishop said the correspondence was a ‘clear sign’ of the success of international diplomatic pressure and financial sanctions against North Korea over their nuclear programme. The letter was received on September 28 at the embassy, and Bishop had it one week later.
This isn’t the first threat levelled at the Western states who are united against Kim Jong-un and his state, and Ms Bishop herself has sparked incendiary comments from the country after a visit to South Korea.
After the visit, DPRK warned Australia would be in line for ‘disaster’ if it followed the US in ‘imposing military, economic and diplomatic pressure upon the DPRK.’
The letter is particularly disparaging of Donald Trump, who is criticised for his speech to the UN, threatening total destruction of the ‘communist’ state.
The letter states:
…if Trump thinks he would bring the DPRK, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation [because] the DPRK has emerged as a fully fledged nuclear power.
The letter has urged the leaders of various countries to act in accordance with their duties to peace and international justice in condemning Trump.
Ms Bishop said:
This is the first letter that we can find that any Australian foreign minister has received from North Korea… It’s an open letter, this is not how they usually send messages around the world.
I read this as showing that the collective strategy of alleis and partners to impose maximum pressure and diplomatic and economic sanctions on North Korea is working; this is a very unusual step of issuing an open letter of this character.
Those two UN Security Council resolutions, which were embraced by China and Russia, impose for the first time sector-wide comprehensive sanctions against DPRK. And most of those sanctions have to be implemented by China. So I think that this shows they are feeling desperate, feeling isolated, trying to demonise the US, trying to divide the international community.
Ms Bishop has said that Trumps constant threats against the North are changing China’s calculations. Australia is also attempting to place pressure on China, saying that if North Korea defied the sanctions of the Security Council then it would undermine China’s international status.
International expert Euan Graham said the letter is a way for North Korea to try and put the feelers out for international allies.
He said:
Now would be a good time for Australia to exercise its still existing, even if on-off, diplomatic relations with the North.
This just highlights the difficult international predicament in which North Korea finds itself, with even long-time allies Russia and China distancing themselves from them in recent months.
It is unclear at this time whether the UK Foreign Office received a copy of the letter.
