North Korea on Thursday called Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe an “idiot” after he criticized a weapons test by Pyongyang.
In a statement attributed to North Korean ambassador for normalization talks with Japan Song Il-ho, Pyongyang described Abe as an “idiot and villain” who was overreacting to what the North described as a test-firing of rocket artillery last week “as if a nuclear bomb was dropped on the land of Japan.”
The statement ridiculed Abe’s expressed willingness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying he would be “well-advised not to dream forever of crossing the threshold of Pyongyang,” after insulting the North’s “just measures” for self-defense.
North Korea has said it conducted its third test-firing of a new “super-large” multiple rocket launcher system last week, although the Japanese Ministry of Defense assessed them as ballistic weapons.
During a regional summit in Thailand earlier this week, Abe reportedly condemned the North’s latest test and described it as a clear breach of UN Security Council resolutions.
He also said he is eager to meet Kim “without conditions.”
“Abe is also a rarely ignorant man who dreams of making Japan a military power, failing to distinguish between multiple rocket launchers and missiles, and he is an under-wit as he is only able to say such crude words as ‘provocation,’ ‘outrage,’ ‘violation,’ ‘abduction’ and ‘pressure,’” said the statement, carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
“It is too natural that Abe is treated as a poor dog and dwarf that fails to enter the international political arena with the Korean Peninsula as a center,” it said.
The Japanese government had no immediate reaction to the North Korean statement.
North Korea has often unleashed crude insults against foreign leaders and politicians to criticize what it sees as slanderous remarks toward its leadership or hostile policies against its government.
The insults have included racist and sexist diatribes, including against former US president Barack Obama and former South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
During tensions created by a provocative run in missile tests in 2017, Kim called US President Donald Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard” after Trump said the US would “totally destroy North Korea” if forced to defend itself or its allies.
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