Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has doubled down on a promise that the United States can count on Australia; in the event of military conflict between the US and North Korea, he has committed our nation to coming to the aid of the US. He might soon be called on to keep that promise, with the rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ramping up in recent days.

The protagonists in this perhaps-not-cold-for-much-longer war are both given to grandiloquence, stomping machismo, and out-and-out threats. At the same time, the escalating war of words between two nuclear powers run by impulsive, thin-skinned egomaniacs doesn’t always make the front pages in Australia — after all, we’ve got to discuss whether gay people should allowed to marry, whether people who support that right are bullies, and just where the bloody hell our politicians are from. 

Both sides are keen to prove the size of their intercontinental ballistic missiles, so we have prepared a quiz. Can you tell which of these statements was said by Donald Trump and which by Kim Jong-un? 

To stop it getting too easy, we’ve replaced any country name with “our enemies”  or “our country”, any reference to a job title as “leader”, and any reference to the leaders themselves in the third person (pretty common, as it happens) has been replaced with “me”. Also, given that this is the first prelude to war to play out as much on social media as speeches, we’ve cleaned up some of grammar. 

  1. “Our enemy best not make any more threats to us. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
  2. “We consider our enemy no more than a lump we can beat to jelly any time.”  
  3. “The days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs.”
  4. “Our republic is a responsible nuclear state that, as we made clear before, will not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty.” 
  5. “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should our enemy act unwisely.”
  6. “My first order as leader was to renovate and modernise our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before”
  7. “My first second and third priority as leader will be to strengthen the military.”
  8. “This is no more than desperate efforts of those frightened at the might of our country. Our access to the strongest nukes and rockets is a legitimate step to defend the destiny of the country.” 
  9. “If our enemies persist in their extremely dangerous, reckless actions on the Korean peninsula and in its vicinity, testing the self-restraint of our country, we will make an important decision …”
  10. “He does something to our country, it will be an event the likes of which nobody has seen before. You’ll see. And he’ll see.”

— Click through to play, and find out the answers