North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in an astonishing and direct haul over the coals, called U.S. President Donald Trump “deranged” and said he will “pay great cost” for his threats, the most possible sign of more influential weapons tests on the horizon.
Mr. Kim said Mr. Trump is “in poor condition to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country.” He also described the U.S. president as “a thug and a ruffian fond of playing with fire.”
The dispatch was unusual in that it was written in the first person, albeit filtered through the North’s state media, which is part of propaganda efforts meant to glorify Mr. Kim. South Korean media called it the first such direct address to the world by Mr. Kim.
Some analysts saw a clear announcement that North Korea would ramp up its previously brisk pace of weapons testing, which has included missiles meant to target U.S. forces throughout Asia and the U.S. mainland.
“I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the U.S. pay dearly for his speech calling for totally destroying the DPRK,” said the statement carried by North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Friday morning.
DPRK is the abbreviation of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The statement acted in response to Mr. Trump’s aggressive speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday where he poke fun at Mr. Kim as a “Rocket Man” on a “suicide mission,” and said that if “forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
Mr. Kim characterized Mr. Trump’s speech to the world body as “mentally deranged behavior.”
Earlier this month, North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date drawing stiffer U.N. sanctions.
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