N. Korea envoy derides Trump threat as 'sound of dog barking': Yonhap

By Lim Chang-won Posted : September 21, 2017, 08:43 Updated : September 21, 2017, 08:43

[Yonhap News photo]


North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho slammed U.S. President Donald Trump, saying his threat to destroy the nation amounted to "the sound of a dog barking".

Ri arrived in New York earlier in the day to attend the U.N. General Assembly. Speaking to reporters, he issued the regime's first response to Trump's threat a day earlier to "totally destroy" North Korea if it poses a direct threat to the U.S. or its allies.

"If he was thinking he could scare us with the sound of a dog barking, that's really a dog dream," Ri said, referencing a North Korean proverb that a procession moves even if dogs bark. In Korean, a dog dream is one that is absurd and makes little sense.

Asked to comment on "Rocket Man", Trump's new nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he said, "I feel sorry for his aides."

Earier, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley defended Trump's reference to the North Korean leader as "Rocket Man", saying other world leaders have started to use the term.

In his first address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said, "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime".

Haley said the new nickname "worked". "I was talking to a president of an African country yesterday, and he actually cited 'Rocket Man' back to me," she said in an interview on ABC. "This is a way of getting people to talk about him, but every other international community now is referring to him as Rocket Man."

(Yonhap)


 
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