According to a Kyunghyang Shinmun report on the 10th, President Trump criticized the Nobel Committee on the 9th (local time) at a rally in Syracuse, New York, supporting candidates in the Nov. 3 midterms. His point was that the United States, which he represents, should have won the Nobel Peace Prize but did not. The report cited The New York Times and Reuters.

Pillay's selection and Trump's reaction

The day before, on the 8th, the Nobel Committee named Navanethem Pillay, an international human rights lawyer and ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as this year's Peace Prize laureate. Trump called the decision a "stain" that will remain on Norway and the committee members, and belittled Pillay as someone he had "never heard of." He also criticized the Peace Prize for losing its authority because of a few radical ideologues, and said he would not forget that Norway did not give him the prize.

"Eight wars" and outside pushback

Trump claimed he had ended eight wars and should have received a Nobel for each. His examples were the conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Israel and Hamas.

Britain's Guardian pointed out that some of these are hard to regard as real wars and some are still unresolved. Trump also claimed he keeps preventing wars between South Korea and North Korea, Japan and North Korea, and China and Taiwan, and said he would resolve or win the Iran war and the Russia-Ukraine war. He added that the Iran matter would end "very quickly."

The report did not mention reactions from the South Korean government or North Korea.

Nor did it say whether Trump offered specific grounds for his claims about the Korean Peninsula. The remarks came at a campaign rally, which should be kept in mind when reading them.