TRUMP TOUR | Trump warns North Korea: Do not 'try us’

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — President Donald Trump delivered a sharp warning to North Korea Wednesday, telling the rogue nation: “Do not underestimate us. And do not try us.”

In a speech delivered hours after he aborted a visit to the heavily fortified Korean demilitarized zone due to bad weather, Trump said he had a message for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger,” Trump told an audience of South Korean lawmakers, calling on all nations to join forces “to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea.”

“The world cannot tolerate the menace of a rogue regime that threatens with nuclear devastation,” he said.

Trump had hoped to underscore his message with an early morning visit to the DMZ, but his plans were thwarted by heavy fog that prevented his helicopter from landing at the heavily fortified border that has separated the North and South for the last 64 years.

The aborted visit came hours before Trump addressed the South Korean National Assembly as he closed out his two-day visit to the nation and headed to his next stop, Beijing.

In the speech, Trump painted a bleak portrait of life in North Korea, describing citizens as bribing government officials to leave the country just so they can work as slaves. He contrasted the poverty and desperation to thriving South Korea — home to a long list of top-rated golfers, he noted.

Trump said the U.S. will not allow its cities to be threatened with destruction, and said that, while America “does not seek conflict or confrontation,” it will not run from it, either.

“The regime has interpreted America’s past restraint as weakness. This would be a fatal miscalculation?,” Trump said. “This is a very different administration than the United States has had in the past.”

He also called on all nations to downgrade diplomatic and economic ties with the North and fully implement a series of U.N. Security Council measures, specifically calling out Russia and China, whose leaders he will meet in coming days.

On Tuesday, Trump’s first day on the Korean Peninsula, he had signaled a willingness to negotiate as he urged North Korea to “come to the table” and “make a deal” over its nuclear weapons program.

He also said he’d seen “a lot of progress” in dealing with Pyongyang, though he stopped short of saying whether he wanted direct talks.