‘Old man’ Trump bluffing – NKorea

North Korea has accused United States President Donald Trump of “bluffing” and called him “an old man bereft of patience” as Pyongyang ramps up pressure on Washington over stalled nuclear talks.

Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un engaged in mutual insults and threats of devastation in 2017, sending tensions soaring before a diplomatic rapprochement the following year.

Pyongyang has now set Washington an end-of-year deadline to offer it new concessions in deadlocked nuclear negotiations, and has said it will adopt an unspecified “new way” if nothing acceptable is forthcoming.

Denuclearization negotiations have been at a standstill since a summit in Hanoi broke up in February.

Trump has indicated that the option of military action was still on the table while downplaying Pyongyang’s actions, saying the North’s leader would not want to “interfere” with the upcoming US presidential elections.

“I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostiley,” Trump said Saturday.

But Kim Yong Chol, who served as the North’s counterpart to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo until the collapse of the Hanoi meeting, condemned Trump’s “odd words and expression”, referring to him as a “heedless and erratic old man.”

If Trump is not “astonished” by North Korea’s response, “we will be irritated,” Kim, now the chairman of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

“This naturally indicates that Trump is an old man bereft of patience,” he said, adding: “From those words and expressions we can read how irritated he is now.”

The official noted that the North Korean leader had not used “any irritating expression towards the US president as yet,” but warned his “understanding” of Trump could change.