California Congressman On North Korea: It's Time To Push Back
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A California congressman is weighing in on North Korea, one day after its governing body hurled a racial slur at President Obama and issued renewed threats against the United States.
In a statement Friday, the National Defence Commission led by Kim Jong-un said, "Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest." North Korea also blamed Washington for the recent Internet outage.
But U.S. Representative Ed Royce (R), the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the insults from North Korea on U.S. leaders are nothing new.
"The rhetoric for some time now out of North Korea has been pretty egregious," he told KCAL9's Erica Nochlin.
But this time, he says, North Korea's comments and threats have come with enough action that it's time for the international community to put the pressure on.
He's calling for sanctions in response to the recent cyberattack on Sony and what he calls efforts to bring down South Korea's banking system.
"When we go back into session, I think we're going to put that legislation on the president's desk and the reason is to cut off their access to funds so that it shuts down, not just their nuclear weapons program, it'll also shut down this Bureau 121, where they train hackers," he said.
As for Sony Pictures' controversial movie "The Interview", which depicts an assassination plot against Kim Jong-un, Congressman Royce points to a 2013 North Korean propaganda video on YouTube. In it, an imagined missile hits the White House and U.S. Capitol.
Meanwhile, a cyber-security expert told Nochlin the latest threat shouldn't be dismissed.
"They absolutely have the capability to do damage and when a child has a gun, you really try to talk to them in a different way," said Steven Laff, a cyber-security expert.
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