(AFP) — SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has lambasted US President Donald Trump for recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, renewing its description of him as a “dotard” in a statement released Saturday on state media.
Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un have traded threats of war and personal insults in recent months as tensions remain high over the North’s missile and nuclear threats.
Now the hermit state has wide-spread condemnation of the US president’s decision on Jerusalem, calling it a “reckless, wicked act.”
“Considering the fact that the mentally deranged dotard openly called for a total destruction of a sovereign state at the UN, this action is not so surprising”, a foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the state-run KCNA news agency.
“But this move clearly shows to the whole world who is the destroyer of world peace and security, pariah and rogue in the international community,” he said, using epithets usually reserved for the North.
In a Wednesday address from the White House, Trump defied worldwide warnings and insisted that after repeated failures to achieve peace a new approach was long overdue, describing his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the seat of Israel’s government as merely based on reality.
The move was hailed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and by leaders across much of the Israeli political spectrum. Trump stressed that he was not specifying the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in the city, and called for no change in the status quo at the city’s holy sites.
But it sparked anger across the Muslim world, and drew expressions of concern and disapproval from US allies.
Trump has previously warned Pyongyang of “fire and fury,” telling the UN General Assembly that Washington would “totally destroy North Korea” if it had to defend itself or its allies.
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.
According to the latest KCNA statement, the North “strongly condemns” the US move to recognise Jerusalem as capital, and expressed “firm support and solidarity for Palestinians and Arab peoples struggling to win their legitimate rights.”
“The US will be held accountable for all consequences from this reckless, wicked act,” it added.