President Barack Obama made it clear during an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” show that aired Tuesday morning that he will not put up with childish behavior from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
“This is the same kind of pattern that we saw his father engage in and his grandfather before that,” Obama told “TODAY” show host Savannah Guthrie. “Since I came into office, the one thing I was clear about was we’re not going to reward this kind of provocative behavior. You don’t get to bang your spoon on the table and somehow you get your way.”
Despite being pressed to do so, the president didn’t feel comfortable elaborating further on the North Korean leader’s behavior.
“Well, I’m not a psychiatrist, and I don’t know the leader of North Korea,” he said. “What I do know is that the actions they’ve taken, the rhetoric they’ve engaged in has been provocative.”
While the president doesn’t think we’ve seen the end of Jong-un’s “provocative behavior,” he did not let on that the North Korean leader is a real threat to national security.
“I think all of us would anticipate that North Korea will probably make more provocative moves over the next several weeks, but our hope is that we can contain it, and that we can move into a different phase in which they try to work through diplomatically some of these issues so that they can get back on a path where they’re feeding their people,” Obama told Guthrie.
Over the past few weeks, North Korea has threatened to attack the United States, Japan, and South Korea with missiles.
Secretary of State John Kerry is currently finishing up his trip to Japan, South Korea and China to discuss — as Obama calls it — this “provocative behavior.”
You can watch the interview for yourself below:
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