송상호
| 2026-09-23 01:26:22
By Song Sang-ho
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President Donald Trump made no mention of North Korea or other Korean Peninsula issues during his high-profile address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, though he has expressed his intention to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year.
During the second address to the Assembly under his second term, Trump touched on a series of key issues, ranging from the Iran war to the protracted war between Russia and Ukraine, and artificial intelligence, which he called "superintelligence."
But he made no references to North Korea, despite speculation that he would seek to rekindle his personal diplomacy with Kim that led to their three in-person meetings during his first term: the first in Singapore in June 2018, the second in Hanoi in February 2019 and the last at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019.
Trump mentioned North Korea in three of the four addresses he delivered during his first term, including his 2017 speech in which he famously called North Korean leader Kim a "rocket man" amid tensions over Pyongyang's missile provocations.
Commenting on Iran, he said that he has a "big decision" to make over whether to reach a deal with the Islamic Republic or "annihilate" it. He also noted that he believes his administration will make a deal with Iran right after the U.S. midterm elections in November.
"I have a big decision to make: Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East, or even the world," he said during the address, which lasted some 40 minutes.
"Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?"
He reiterated that Iran "will never have a nuclear weapon," while calling for countries to join efforts toward that end.
"I call on all nations to join us in enforcing the complete economic isolation of Iran until they stop their attacks on commercial shipping, relinquish their nuclear ambitions, and cease their support of terror," he said.
Touching on Cuba, Trump said that his administration is seeking a "fundamental" change in the country, noting that Havana is under "the biggest pressure they've ever been under."
"It's an absolutely failed state. It's failing like never before, and it will fall," Trump said, referring to the Cuban regime.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is handling negotiations with Cuba, the president said.
"Let's see what happens," Trump said.
"We will not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep, right at our doorstep. The Cuban regime has also spent decades coordinating with the left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States as our State Department has detailed," he added.
Moreover, Trump highlighted his administration's push to reassert American power across the Western Hemisphere while pointing to the U.S.' engagement with Venezuela.
"Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, and if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States," he said.
Regarding artificial intelligence, Trump said that the U.S. "totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence (AI)."
He also called for the use of the term, "superintelligence," instead of AI, arguing that the word, artificial," makes intelligence sound "fake."
"From this point forward, all of U.S. documents and hopefully the world will be changed to use the much more accurate term, 'super,' as opposed to artificial. So it's super intelligence," he said. "In other words, welcome to the new world of superintelligence."
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