President Donald Trump on Friday issued his starkest warning yet against North Korea - Wall Street Journal

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in Bedminister, N.J., Thursday.

By Louise Radnofsky

Updated Aug. 11, 2017 8:29 a.m. ET

President Donald Trump on Friday issued his starkest warning yet against North Korea, saying that “military solutions” were “in place, locked and loaded” should Pyongyang “act unwisely.”

From his working vacation at his golf resort in Bedminister, N.J., the president made the warning on Twitter just before 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time, escalating his rhetoric beyond his declaration the previous day that a previous threat to hit North Korea with “fire and fury” should it threaten the U.S. wasn’t strong enough.

The president concluded the Friday tweet, “Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”

A day before, Mr. Trump said rejected criticisms that his words had been too inflammatory. He repeated his exhortation to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to stop issuing threats and vowed to invest billions of dollars more in missile defense.

”They’ve been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years, and it’s about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country and for the people of other countries,” Mr. Trump said Thursday, referring to North Korea’s threats. “So, if anything, maybe that statement wasn’t tough enough.”

The president’s comments escalated an exchange of threats between the U.S. and North Korea that have rattled markets and unnerved world leaders concerned about a nuclear-armed confrontation. U.S. stocks fell by nearly 1% on Thursday, for a third straight session.

Just an hour before Mr. Trump’s latest tweet, North Korea’s state media accused the U.S. president of “driving the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war,” pointing to his threats of war against the North.

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In a separate article published earlier in the day, North Korea said of U.S. war threats that “if the U.S. opened its eyes to...who its rival is, such stupid remarks would not have been made.”

“It is ridiculous that the U.S. warmongers are unaware of the fact that even a single shell dropped on the Korean Peninsula might lead to the outbreak of a new world war, a thermonuclear war,” the statement added.

The escalation began earlier in the week after Pyongyang defied pressure from United Nations sanctions, rejected American entreaties to consider talks and threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. if militarily provoked. Mr. Trump responded with his warning that the country stop making threats or face “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

The exchanges have overshadowed a U.S. diplomatic effort that led to the unanimous passage of the sanctions at the U.N. last weekend and continued with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Asia this week. Mr. Trump’s threats have drowned out the more conciliatory rhetoric of Mr. Tillerson, who has said Washington doesn’t seek regime change and wants to pressure North Korea into disarmament talks.

—Jonathan Cheng in Seoul contributed to this article