President Trump’s dramatic intervention that nuclear threats from Pyongyang will be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” has been quickly matched by North Korea warning that its military planners are considering options to strike the US Pacific island of Guam.

Long-standing North Korea watchers are used to blood-curdling rhetoric from Pyongyang. References in state media to turning US and allied targets into “a sea of fire” have been standard fare since the 1990s. Such rhetoric is usually discounted as bravado – comical, even – and it’s no exaggeration to say that dedicated North Korea watchers start to wonder if Pyongyang is really up to something nefarious if there is an extended lull in apocalyptic threats.

But explicit military threats from Washington are less common, which makes Trump’s remarks significant. Ominously, they point to a dangerous new phase on the Korean peninsula. The leadership in Pyongyang has no intention of dialing down its threats against the US – the Guam statement came literally hours after Trump’s remarks – and the flurry of nuclear threats against the US mainland following the UN Security Council’s approval of tough new sanctions against North Korea is testament to this.

Please click here to read the full “Kim Jong-un’s Guam threat probes Trump’s North Korea credibility gap” article in the Financial Review by Griffith Asia Institute member Professor Andrew O’Neil.