Despite threats by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to launch hydrogen weapons and possibly attack the United States, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker reassured Americans today that they shouldn't be unduly worried about being hit with bombs from the nuclear-armed North Korea.
"I don't think Americans today should be concerned for their own safety," Corker said today in Chattanooga. "He understands that (to attack the U.S.) would be end of his existence. His goal is not really to do something offensively but to secure the fact that he dies an old man in his bed, to use an old adage."
Corker said Kim Jong Un wants to keep his nuclear weaponry to ensure his own survival, noting that after Muammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear arsenal in 2003,he was toppled by NATO and his Libyan opponents in a civil war only eight years later.
'He also uses this (nuclear arsenal and development) as a way of trying to have dominion over South Korea," Corker said. "All of the momentum has been with South Korea (for economic growth and progress) and to the extent North Korea develops the full nuclear capacity he is drawing to achieve, he thinks that changes that equation dramatically."
The North Korean dictator Thursday denounced President Donald Trump as a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" and hinted at testing more nuclear weapons over the Pacific. Trump responded to Kim Jon-un, calling him "a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people."
Amid the war of words, Corker said he supports the U.S. efforts to impose stricter sanctions and urged the world community to do the same to push North Korea to the bargaining table to negotiate giving up its nuclear weapons.
Corker said the world community "needs to do everything we can to make sure we exercise every opportunity to resolve this in a peaceful manner. It may be the United States and other countries need to continue to put economic and diplomatic pressures on North Korea."
"(Trump) put in place some really tough sanctions which I applaud. They should put additional pressures on North Korea," Corker said. "I do hope that the rest of the world community is going to join in to squeeze the country economically as much as what can be done."
Corker said 85 percent of the trade by North Korea is done with China and "hopefully China will continue to do a lot more" to sanction North Korea.
Corker acknowledged that most U.S. intelligence agencies fear that no matter how much economic pressure the U.S. puts on North Korea they are not going to stop pursuing nuclear weapons "because they see this as critical to their ability to continue as a regime."
"They believe that as long as they have a nuclear weapon that can be delivered to the United States, there is no way that they will ever be attacked," Corker said. "So a little dialogue needs to go along with these sanctions. There are a lot of people think that it is not realistic (for North Korea to give up all of its nuclear weapons), to be honest with you. But I think we as a nation need to do everything we can from a peaceful and diplomatic standpoint."