Trump praises North Korea’s border, calling it the world’s strongest.
According to Newsweek, Trump described North Korea’s border with the United States as “one of the strongest borders in the world,” in a speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, local time, with seven wire fences and a million volts of electricity running through them.
“We have one of the strongest borders in the world,” Trump said. “There’s probably one country that has a stronger border. North Korea has a stronger border. North Korea has seven wire fences, and each one has a million volts of electricity running through it. So if you go through one, you’re going to be killed at the next border. If you go through one, you’re in very bad shape. If you go through two, you’ve set a record. I think North Korea has the most secure border. But our border is very secure.”
He then claimed that the United States now has the strongest border in its history. He went on to link the remarks to his long-standing attacks on former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies and his own promise to close the border.
Newsweek highlighted the importance of this issue: Trump has made border security a defining issue of his presidency, repeatedly arguing that the United States had “the strongest and most secure border in U.S. history” under his presidency and the worst under Biden.
The publication saw the president’s praise of North Korea’s border as an attempt to forge a new diplomatic path with Seoul to resume talks with Pyongyang, amid warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that North Korea is “in its strongest strategic position in decades” and is building up its forces to threaten U.S. forces and allies.
Newsweek also noted that Trump’s praise of North Korea’s heavily fortified border comes against a backdrop of rising tensions along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ); That is, where satellite imagery and military reports show that mines and other defensive equipment are being placed on both sides of the Korean border.
According to the latest satellite images, North Korea is building new barriers along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which already has extensive minefields and other defensive fortifications on both sides. Pyongyang has also been strengthening and laying mines on tactical roads and clearing land along the border as tensions rise.
“There is a real and growing risk that Kim Jong-un will start a new conflict in Korea,” former U.S. intelligence official Marcus Garlauskas told Newsweek in a recent interview. “I worry that just because there hasn’t been a major North Korean aggression recently and because Kim seems to have given up on unifying Korea as a goal, many Americans are underestimating that risk.”
The publication concludes that Trump’s praise of North Korea’s borders and his emphasis on internal border security show that he continues to weave his domestic and foreign policy narratives around the language of borders. In fact, he is presenting the southern border of the United States and the Korean Demilitarized Zone as the main test of his promise to build the strongest borders at home and abroad.