Time to forget nuclear buttons at desks

Following almost a year of a war of words between Washington and Pyongyang, US President Donald Trump and Democratic People's Republic of Korea's leader Kim Jong-un are threatening each other with the nuclear buttons at their desks at the onset of the new year, which doesn't seem to augur well for 2018.

On his Twitter account on Tuesday, Trump said that his nuclear button is "much bigger and more powerful" than Kim's, hours after Kim said in his New Year's Day speech that, "The entire mainland of the US is within the range of our nuclear weapons and the nuclear button is always on the desk of my office."

For those looking forward to a glimpse of peace at the end of the long tunnel of conflicts and threats, such rhetoric is shocking. It means the situation on the Korean Peninsula risks degrading further into a vicious cycle of provocation and confrontation.