Defense
Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images
Trump looking like "huh?"
- North Korea made unusually bizarre attacks on President Donald Trump after Trump started criticizing Pyongyang for its abysmal human rights record.
- North Korea mocked Trump as a "dolt" and saying he "cannot deodorize the nasty smell from his dirty body woven with frauds, sexual abuses and all other crimes."
- North Korea's hysterical response makes it seem like Trump is striking a nerve with his embrace of North Korea's people and defectors.
North Korea offered a typically bellicose but unusually bizarre response to President Donald Trump's increased scrutiny of Pyongyang's abysmal human rights record, attacking Trump's personal cleanliness in the process.
The tirade from Pyongyang follows Trump hosting North Korean defectors in the Oval Office, and his inclusion of a double amputee and North Korean defector in his State of the Union address, where he also pointed to the "depraved" nature of the Kim regime.
North Korean media called the visit by defectors an "intolerable politically motivated provocation and tyrannical blackmail," the Japan Times notes.
The article bashing Trump, which appeared in North Korea's most widely circulated paper, connected Trump's recently increased interest in human rights in North Korea to rumblings out of the White House that he's planning military action.
"There is a foolish attempt to make pretense for provocation and pave the road for invasion ahead of conducting the military adventure 'bloody nose strategy,'" the paper wrote.
According to the paper, "dolt-like Trump should know that his backbone would be broken, to say nothing of a 'bloody nose,' and the empire of America would go to hell and the short history of the US would end forever, the moment he destroys even a single blade of grass on this land."
The paper then said the US should "urgently detain Trump" to put him in a mental hospital, before attacking Trump for his hygiene, which they apparently perceive to be bad.
"No matter how desperately Trump may try to defame the dignified and just system in the DPRK with the worst invectives, he cannot deodorize the nasty smell from his dirty body woven with frauds, sexual abuses and all other crimes nor keep the U.S. from rushing to the final destruction."
North Korea is really, really touchy about its human rights record
Reuters/KNCA This is the image Kim Jong Un wants you to see, when really tens of thousands are rotting in prison for speaking against the government.
North Korea has a history of responding harshly, even hysterically, to mentions of their human rights abuses. No form of political dissent or free speech that does not agree with Kim Jong Un's narrative is tolerated in the country.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans languish in prison camps, some of whom have been sentenced to terms longer than a single life time, meaning their children will be born into prison.
When Trump spoke to the North Korean defectors on Friday, he touched on the seemingly accelerating pace of defectors from the country. He listened to the defectors' tales and congratulated them on taking the ultimate risk to secure their freedom.
Judging by the North Korean response, Trump may have struck a nerve.