Kim calls Trump ‘ deranged’ as Pyongyang hints at Hbomb
RARE STATEMENT North Korean supreme leader says US president has ‘insulted me in front of world’, says will make him ‘pay dearly’ for UN speech
SEOUL: US President Donald Trump is “mentally deranged” and will “pay dearly” for his threat to destroy North Korea, Kim Jong-un said on Friday, as his foreign minister hinted the regime may explode a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
In a rare personal attack published hours after Washington announced tougher sanctions, the North Korean leader took aim at Trump over his maiden speech to the UN General Assembly in which he branded Kim “Rocket Man” and threatened to “totally destroy North Korea”.
Trump “insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history”, Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
“I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech,” which he called “unprecedented rude nonsense”.
The dispatch was accompanied by a photo of the North Korean leader sitting behind a desk holding a piece of paper.
“I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,” he said.
On the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters Pyong- yang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory. “I think that it could be an H-bomb test at an unprecedented level perhaps over the Pacific,” he said.
However, he added: “It is up to our leader so I do not know well.”
Analysts say the sanctions on North Korea show no signs of working, and cautioned that the increasingly ill-tempered and personal exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang did not augur well.
“There are some very dangerous things that could come that move this from theatre to reality. This is the time to be heading them off, not making them feel inevitable,” said John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul.
He added that Kim’s rare firstperson statement could also have been aimed at North Koreans.
“He is telling his country that the American president at the United Nations said he is going to totally destroy us... but I am not going to let that happen,” Delury told AFP.
The statement was published Friday in North Korean newspapers and read out on state television by a news anchor.
The announcement, which was scheduled to be played repeatedly throughout the rest of the evening, was followed by video footage of a giant missile on a launch pad and North Korean soldiers angrily waving fists and guns in the air.