Biden says North Korean challenge is 'equally as threatening as it was before': TIME

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on immigration in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., June 4. EPA-Yonhap

U.S. President Joe Biden has said North Korea's security challenge is "equally as threatening as it was before," U.S magazine TIME reported Tuesday, as he apparently rejects the notion that Pyongyang's menace has grown more serious during his presidency.

Biden made the remarks in a recent interview with TIME as he is cranking up his reelection campaign to face former President Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 presidential election. Trump has boasted his personal ties with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying "America was safe" during his presidency.

"I think it's equally as threatening as it was before. I don't think it's more threatening, and North Korea has something else that it has to deal with," he said in the interview, according to a transcript released on the magazine's website.

He was responding to a question about whether the security situation related to North Korea is getting more threatening.

Biden argued that Trump was "wrong" for not wanting to put together a nuclear arms access control arrangement on North Korea.

"Look, as long as there are nuclear weapons available, it's always going to be a problem ... The question is, how do we stop it?" he said.

"That's why I thought Trump was wrong in not wanting to work early on five years ago, and three years ago, when he left office, with trying to control, work out an arrangement to control access to North Korea, to nuclear weapons and/or nuclear weapons that are available to any other area," he added.

The president enumerated a series of trilateral and other initiatives that his administration has launched or strengthened to promote security. They include the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, which consists of the United States, Australia, India and Japan.

"I put together a Quad that never existed before ... I put together AUKUS with Great Britain and Australia," he said. "I put together an agreement between Japan and the Philippines dealing with making sure that we know the international rules of the road pertaining in terms of air and water and territorial integrity."

Having said this, Biden stressed, "We are much stronger in the Pacific than we ever were before."

Biden also underscored his administration's Indo-Pacific strategy, improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan, and U.S.-led multilateral efforts to support Ukraine.

"Did you ever think if I told you that Japan would be devoting 3 percent of its GDP to defense and make a rapprochement at Camp David with South Korea as an overwhelming threat that exists to North Korea as well as to Europe?" he said. (Yonhap)