North Korea must be dealt with

OPINION:

North Korea, long a thorn in the side of America — a thorn that sharpened considerably under the “strategic patience”-slash-do-nothing leadership of Barack Obama — has seized a third American citizen.

And the regime must be dealt an aggressive blow.

Bluntly, you can’t be grabbing American citizens and detaining ’em for no reason. It’s not only impolite; it’s an act of war.

Saturday, Kim Sang-duk, also called Tony Kim, in North Korea to teach at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, was taken into custody at the airport on Saturday. Why?

Who knows.

“We understand this detention is related to an investigation into matters not connected in any way with the work of PUST,” the school said in a statement. “We cannot comment on anything that Mr. Kim may be alleged to have done that is not related to his teaching work on the PUST campus.”

Actually — we do know why he’s been detained. Kim, the third American to be taken into regime custody in recent times, has been detained because Kim Jong-un wants to send a message to America that he can.

Kim the professor joins in confinement two other Americans — Otto Warmbier, 21, a student at the University of Virginia, who was taken into custody in January 2016, and Kim Dong-chul, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Korean heritage, arrested October 2015. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for the supposed crime of removing a political sign from a hotel wall. And Kim, a businessman, was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for allegedly spying on the government.

The charges, as everybody outside of the dear leader’s circle of fearful friends, are ridiculous and aimed to provoke.

Also over the weekend, North Korea issued a message toward President Donald Trump about the USS Carl Vinson, set for joint drills with Japan in the Pacific Ocean, that went like this: We’re “ready to sink” you.

Again, how impolite.

Trump’s response? Monday, he was reportedly working the phones to bolster ties with Japan and China.

China’s suspended coal imports from North Korea, the Washington Post reported. And the country’s supposedly prepared to “undoubtedly support” the United Nations’ move to tighten sanctions on the regime if Pyongyang tries a sixth nuclear test.

Sanctions are good — but they’re not an end of North Korean aggressions. Gas prices have reportedly soared in recent days in Pyongyang, and residents are suffering long lines at the pumps. But in the end, Kim is a despot and cares little for his people — what’s a gas line, when most are already starving?

North Korea must give up its nuclear weapons program, quit its belligerent threats and leave America’s allies alone. And there must be deadlines for the regime to comply.

Reunification with South Korea and collapse of the North would be ideal — but it’s a bit of a stretch to envision that in the near future. For now, working with China to try to seriously dent North Korea’s financial future — to put the squeeze on so hard it affects the regime, not just the citizen — is the best way to go. Next up? Regime change. With Trump at the helm, and the ostrich-in-the-sand Obama administration gone, at least the messages coming from America are ones of strength, not weakness. Perhaps that might prove the missing link that for eight years allowed Pyongyang to rattle sabers and threaten war with abandon.

But the grabbing of American citizens is an intolerable. And America would be quite justified in taking stronger military action to win the freedom of our citizens. If the State Department and diplomatic allies can’t secure their release in a timely manner, the United States should certainly rattle some sabers back at North Korea and let the regime know abductions just aren’t acceptable.