North Korea on Thursday said US President Donald Trump was "bereft of reason" and would only respond to force, as it elaborated on a threat to attack the US Pacific territory of Guam.

 

Trump this week stunned the world with a bold-faced message to Kim Jong-Un, saying his country faced "fire and fury like the world has never seen". 

 

Pyongyang then said it was working on a plan to fire simultanenously four ballistic missiles in an enveloping fire around Guam, a key US military stronghold.

 

"Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him," the official KCNA news service quoted General Kim Rak-Gyom of the Korean People's Army (KPA) as saying on Thursday.

 

The statement said the KPA would complete mid-August a plan for the attack, which would involve four rockets flying over Japan, and submit it to Kim Jong-Un for consideration as a "crucial warning to the US".

 

The unusually detailed statement said the four missiles would overfly the Japanese prefectures of Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi. 

 

They would have a flight time of 17 minutes 45 seconds, travel 3,356.7 kilometres (around 2,086 miles) and hit the waters 30 to 40 kilometres away from Guam.

 

The western Pacific island is home to US strategic assets including long-range bombers and military jets and submarines, which are regularly deployed for shows of force in and near the Korean peninsula, to Pyongyang's fury.

 

Two supersonic US bombers took off from the island on a fly-over mission to the Korean peninsula early this week.

 

Shin Jong-Wook, an analyst with Korea Defence and Security Forum, said Guam is well within range of the North's Hwasong-12 missile, which was unveiled in Pyongyang during a military parade in April. 

 

"The North is believed to have verified the credibility of Hwasong-12 by successfully test-launching it in May," he told AFP.

 

Tensions tend to increase when South Korea and the US launch major military joint exercises.

 

The next such exercise, Ulchi Freedom Guardian, is set to kick off around August 21.