September 19, 2017

There Are No Good Options When It Comes to North Korea. Here’s Why.

A history.

President Trump stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning to warn of North Korea’s total destruction if it threatened the US with force. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself, or it’s allies,” he said, “We will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

Trump’s speech at the annual gathering of world leaders in New York marked yet another escalation in violent rhetoric between the US and North Korea. The past summer has been marked by both frequent ballistic testing by North Korea, including a hydrogen bomb test in September, and Trump retaliating with threats of “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”  

To understand how we got here, we need to go back to the end of World War II. Watch the video above for a look at the timeline of U.S. and North Korea relations. 

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