‘Deranged’ Trump under fire

NORTH KOREA SLAMS US LEADER AHEAD OF HIS FIRST VISIT TO ASIA

North Korea slammed US President Donald Trump as “incurably mentally deranged” in a personal attack ahead of his first visit to Asia, as the South’s leader insisted Washington could not take military action on the peninsula without his agreement.

Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un have traded threats of war and personal insults against each other in recent months, heightening worries about another conflict on the peninsula where the 1950-53 Korean War left millions dead.

The US leader has warned of “fire and fury”, telling the United Nations (UN) General Assembly that Washington would “totally destroy North Korea” if it had to defend itself or its allies.

Washington and Seoul have been in a security alliance for decades, and the US has 28 500 troops stationed in the South to defend it from the North.

Trump dubbed Kim “Rocket Man” in the same speech – Pyongyang has tested missiles apparently capable of reaching much of the US mainland – and days later Kim responded with a personal statement calling him a “dotard”, an obscure term for a weak or senile old man.

The US president is due in Asia at the weekend and ahead of his arrival the North’s state-run KCNA news agency lashed out at “bellicose and irresponsible rhetoric” by the “master of invective”.

Washington has deployed key military assets including jet fighters and aircraft carriers near the peninsula following the North’s sixth nuclear test in September, which also saw the UN impose an eighth set of sanctions on the isolated country.

Trump, KCNA said late on Tuesday, “disclosed his true nature as a nuclear war maniac before the world and was diagnosed as ‘incurably mentally deranged’”. – AFP