North Korea threatens to turn young people into 'human bullets'

By James Law

North Korea has doubled down on its threat to annihilate the US, pledging to use its young people to "blow the US from this planet".

The country's official Korean Central News Agency released a chilling new piece of propaganda on Thursday, reporting on a mass rally held in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square.

Pyongyang City Youth League Committee first secretary Mun Chol vowed during the rally that "the young people in the country would become five million human bullets and bombs and nuclear warheads to blow the US from this planet".

Thousands participate in a mass rally held at Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Photo / AP

Participants at the rally held signs bearing slogans such as:

● "Strike the United States with nuclear thunderbolt"

● "Those who touch us will not escape death"

● "A revenge attack of annihilation"

● "Let's become bullets and bombs devotedly defending respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong-un!"

● "We fully support the statement of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] government categorically rejecting the 'sanctions resolution' against the DPRK!"

Workers' Party of Korea member Kim Ki-nam also spoke at the rally, condemning the "shameless gangster-like" US and its allies for "cooking up" sanctions on the nation via the United Nations and saying it was "frightened at the might" of North Korea's nuclear power.

"The DPRK's access to the strongest nukes and rockets is a legitimate step to defend the destiny of the country and nation, and ensure the right to independent development," he said.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered for a rally at Kim Il Sung Square as a show of support for their rejection of the United =Nations' latest round of sanctions this week. Photo / AP

Mr Kim said the US had falsely styled itself as the "only superpower in the world" and suggested that efforts to pressure it not to develop weapons would only encourage it further.

"Any sanctions and pressure will not browbeat the DPRK but harden its independent faith and result in increasing the might of its self-development," he said.

"We will further increase the might of justice to wipe out the source of all injustice and evils, now that the gangster-like acts of the US have reached their height and clearly show what miserable and wretched fate those standing in the way of the DPRK will have to face."

Mr Kim's comments also contained an implicit threat towards US allies, such as Australia.

"The neighbouring countries which blindly follow the US as its puppets ... will never be able to evade the responsibility for having coiled up the situation on the Korean Peninsula and endangered peace and security in the region," he said.

"Though the US and the groups counting on it are getting so frantic, the DPRK remains unshaken as it is possessed of the strongest nuclear weapons and ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missiles]."

Tensions between North Korea and the US have reached new heights after the Trump administration sought to punish the rogue nation for its ICBM test launches via UN sanctions.

After the rogue nation reacted with renewed vitriol towards the US, President Donald Trump said any threats would be "met with fire and fury like the world has never seen".

North Korea was undeterred by the President's unprecedented war rhetoric, dismissing his statement as a "load of nonsense".

It added that "only absolute force" could work on someone as "bereft of reason" as Mr Trump.

The KCNA said yesterday that Kim Jong-un was "seriously examining" a plan to launch a ballistic missile attack on Guam, an island in the Pacific Ocean that is home to strategically significant bases for the US Air Force.