 Rodong Sinmun unleashes high-octane criticism against the U.S. Image: Rodong Sinmun |
After a short period of refraining from criticizing the US, North Korea recently returned to familiar territory by unleashing a barrage of insults toward its historical foe.
In an article entitled, “Boiling the Heart’s Blood with Endless Revenge,” the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun wrote, “Our hearts burn with the blood of endless revenge toward the murderous U.S. imperialist and class enemy man-eaters who enjoy the slaughter of human beings […] Any illusion about the enemy will lead to death.”
Another article entitled, “America’s savage desire to take over the world has not changed,” claims that, “The US is provoking an arms race […] It is using the plausible but fallacious concept of ‘peace through power’ to start a war to dominate the world.”
A total of eight articles on the fifth and sixth pages of the Rodong Sinmun contained harsh criticism and insults directed at the US. Although the newspaper recently criticized the US for raising the North Korean human rights issue, these latest articles mark a more robust return to the use of unrestrained language.
The articles appear related to the announcement by North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs First Vice-Minister Kim Kye-gwan on May 16 that North Korea is reconsidering attending the US-DPRK summit.
“High-ranking officials of the White House and the Department of State including White House National Security Advisor Bolton are letting loose the assertions of the so-called Libyan model of nuclear disarmament, ‘complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,’ ‘total decommissioning of nuclear weapons, missiles, biochemical weapons,’ etc, while discussing the formula of ‘abandoning nuclear weapons first, compensation afterwards […]’ If the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear disarmament, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our participation in the DPRK-US Summit,” Kwan was quoted as saying.
However, it appears that North Korea is tempering the nature of the criticism it is directing at the US.
When tension with the US reached a high-water mark following North Korea’s intercontinental missile tests and sixth nuclear weapons test last year, Kim Jong Un was quoted in a personal statement calling President Trump a “mentally-deranged US dotard.”
