North Korea yesterday renewed its strong attack against Japan for announcing new sanctions against the communist state, describing it as a "bat-blind," boot-licking "political charlatan."
"Japan would be well advised to behave with discretion, pondering over the serious consequences to be entailed by its harebrained act against the DPRK [North Korea]," said the Rodong Sinmun newspaper of the ruling communist party.
Japan last week blacklisted 15 companies and an individual with alleged links to weapons programs in North Korea in compliance with a UN resolution that condemned Pyongyang's missile tests in July.
The US has urged its allies to tighten the financial noose around North Korea, which is also involved in a standoff with the international community over its nuclear ambitions.
In a commentary, Rodong Sinmun described the sanctions as "poor, third-rate diplomacy of bat-blind philistines."
It added: "Japan is whipping itself into senseless frenzy to please the whim of its American master ... It does not warrant surprise, considering that Japan has made it its physical quality to lick the boots of the American master and tail behind the US."
The commentary, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, described the sanctions as "disgusting behavior of a slovenly political charlatan bent on refurbishing his public image by ingratiating himself with his American master and feathering his own nest by following the US."
The "clumsy and wicked act" trampled on the spirit and requirements of the Pyongyang Declaration, it added.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the North's leader Kim Jong-il issued the declaration on establishing better relations after a 2002 summit was held in Pyongyang.
But relations have soured since then, partly over the fate of Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
Pyongyang has returned five of the kidnap victims but Japan insists that more are alive and being kept under wraps.
"It is justifiable and natural for the DPRK to put up a tough rebuff to Japan's desperate political provocation. The situation is very serious and the consequences are unpredictable," Rodong Sinmun added.
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