North Korea threatened to resume calling President Donald Trump a “dotard,” should he continue to refer to leader Kim Jong Un as “rocket man.”
In a statement released by state media on Thursday, first vice foreign minister Chloe Son Hui said that the word “dotard,” meaning an old man who is mentally slow, may make a reappearance.
“If any language and expressions stoking the atmosphere of confrontation are used once again … that must really be diagnosed as the relapse of the dotage of a dotard,” Son Hui said.
During the NATO Summit on Tuesday, Trump bragged about his good relationship with Jong Un but acknowledged that a recent missile test by his country could complicate relations.
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“[He] likes sending rockets up, doesn’t he?” Trump said. “That’s why I call him Rocket Man.”
Trump continued, “We have the most powerful military we ever had, and we are by far the most powerful country in the world and hopefully we don’t have to use it. But if we do, we will use it.”
Chloe said that Trump’s threat of using military strength “prompted the waves of hatred of our people against the U.S.”
Kim first called Trump as a “dotard” in 2017, after Trump referred to him as “rocket man” in a United Nations address.
