North Korea has launched a vitriolic attack on the South Korean president, comparing her to "crafty prostitute" in thrall to her "pimp" Barack Obama. It also described Park Geun-hye as America's "comfort woman", a reference likely to enrage many in South Korea, where anger still runs high over the plight of thousands of women who were enslaved in Japanese military brothels during the second world war.
He arrived in Malaysia on Sunday for the penultimate stop on his four-nation tour of Asia. While Pyongyang is known for its aggressive rhetoric, recent remarks have been unusually personal. Earlier this month state media ran misogynist articles, including one headlined " We accuse Park the bitch ", labelling her as a lunatic, idiot and "cold-blooded animal" and emphasising the fact that she has never married or had children.
Those remarks were presented in the form of quotes from ordinary North Koreans, while the latest tirade, carried by state news agency KCNA, is presented as a statement from an official body. It comes days after a homophobic diatribe which described the head of a United Nations commission on human rights in North Korea as a "disgusting old lecher". Pyongyang was angered by the team's report, which said it was committing grave and systematic human rights abuses on a scale unparalleled in the modern world.
Obama and Park had warned Pyongyang it could face strengthened sanctions if it detonated a fourth nuclear device, after North Korea said it could carry out a new kind of test.
Satellite imagery has shown increased activity at a test site. Those remarks "laid bare her despicable true colours as a wicked sycophant and traitor, a dirty comfort woman for the US and despicable prostitute selling off the nation," said the CPRK. It said the trip had shown North Korea was right to have concluded it should deal with the US "by force only, not just talking, and should finally settle accounts with it through an all-out nuclear showdown".
