North Korea blasts South Korea’s Lee as ‘confrontation maniac’

State media hits retired astatine South Korean person pursuing code connected atomic disarmament and information confederation with US.

North Korea has branded South Korean President Lee Jae-myung a “confrontation maniac” aft a code successful the United States successful which helium urged efforts to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula.

In a code pursuing a gathering with US President Donald Trump connected Monday, Lee said denuclearisation was important to securing a imperishable bid betwixt the Koreas and would let the South Korea-US confederation to beryllium upgraded successful a “global context”.

On Wednesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) deed retired astatine the South Korean leader, saying his code had revealed his “true colours arsenic a hypocrite to the full world”.

“His behaviour overseas intelligibly proved that the ROK’s [Republic of Korea] strategy for confrontation with the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] tin ne'er change,” the KCNA said successful an unsigned commentary, utilizing the acronyms for the authoritative names of South Korea and North Korea.

“At the aforesaid time, Lee Jae-myung, with his unveiled confrontational intention, gave irrefutable grounds to beryllium wherefore his remarks astir ‘denuclearisation’ are a sheer sophism,” the KCNA, which operates arsenic a mouthpiece for Pyongyang, said.

“Availing ourselves of this opportunity, we erstwhile again punctual him of the information that our presumption arsenic a atomic weapons authorities is an inevitable enactment that correctly reflects the hostile menace from extracurricular and the alteration of the operation of the satellite information dynamics.”

Denuclearisation is already “extinct theoretically, practically and physically”, the KCNA added, calling Lee’s imaginativeness “little abbreviated of a naive dream, similar trying to drawback a unreality floating successful the sky”.

Lee, who took bureau successful June, has pledged to amended relations with Pyongyang aft years of strained inter-Korean ties nether his blimpish predecessor, the impeached ex-President Yoon Suk-yeol.

But those efforts person been repeatedly rebuffed by North Korea.

In a scathing connection earlier this month, North Korean person Kim Jong Un’s almighty sister, Kim Yo Jong, lambasted the South Koreans’ efforts astatine détente, declaring, “We bash not attraction astir them and are not funny successful them.”

North Korea, which has been deed with aggregate rounds of US and United Nations sanctions implicit its weapons programmes, is estimated to person built astir 50 atomic warheads and to person atomic worldly for dozens more, according to the Arms Control Association.