The US has condemned “ugly and disrespectful” racist comments directed at US President Barack Obama by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) comparing the US leader to a black “monkey” in a zoo.
North Korean propaganda is known for vitriolic personal attacks on foreign leaders, but the KCNA dispatch published on Friday last week — not long after Obama’s visit to Seoul — stood out for its use of highly inflammatory and abusive racist language.
“The way Obama looks disgusts me... He looks like an African monkey with a black face ... and protruding, hairy ears ... he acts just like a monkey in an African zoo ... licking up the breadcrumbs thrown by visitors,” the news agency citied a worker at an ironworks factory as saying.
Four people were interviewed in total and all their comments were similar in their racist nature, with one referring to Obama as “sub-animal.”
“While the North Korean government-controlled media are distinguished by their histrionics, these comments are particularly ugly and disrespectful,” US National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told reporters on Thursday.
Even before Friday, KCNA had ramped up its rhetoric in the wake of Obama’s visit to Seoul, calling South Korean President Park Geun-hye a “prostitute” in thrall to her “pimp” Obama.
Last month, it launched an aggressively homophobic tirade against the openly gay chairman of the UN inquiry into North Korean rights abuses, Michael Kirby.
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