Hillary Clinton brought her foreboding take on President Trump’s handling of a hostile North Korea straight to South Korea during a speech in the capital of Seoul.
The former secretary of state, speaking Wednesday local time at the 18th World Knowledge Forum, derided the U.S.’s “bellicose” and “aggressive” stance on Pyongyang, which has continued to make progress in its missile and nuclear programs despite international pressure to make it stop.
Trump has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if provoked.
Such an attitude from Washington is “dangerous and short-sighted,” Clinton said.
As Trump has made a habit of calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “little rocket man,” Clinton said, without mentioning Trump’s name, that picking fights with Kim “just puts a smile on his face.” Meanwhile, North Korea says Trump is “mentally deranged.”
Clinton pressed the importance of international negotiations and emphasized China’s importance in such talks.
She also said China, North Korea’s neighbor to the north, needs to play a “more outfront role” and “tighten and absolutely enforce sanctions” against North Korea.
Bejing is in somewhat of a standoff with Seoul over its opposition to South Korea’s deployment of THAAD, a U.S. anti-missile defense system, in response to the North Korean threat. There have been threats of boycotts and bans on South Korean businesses.
Clinton asserted that China “can’t have it both ways.”
“They can’t do less than they could to tighten economic pressures on North Korea and at the same time discount the real threat South Korea and its citizens face,” Clinton said.
Clinton has repeatedly knocked her former 2016 election opponent over the past several weeks as she has travelled around the U.S. and the world promoting her new campaign memoir, What Happened.
