After Trump Splits With Bolton, N. Korea Pounces

Foreign ministry rep calls him a 'war maniac,' 'human defect'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted May 27, 2019 10:37 AM CDT
After Trump Splits With Bolton, N. Korea Pounces
US National Security Adviser John Bolton is surrounded by reporters at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday.   (Yohei Kanasashi/Kyodo News via AP, File)

President Trump acknowledged he was breaking with advisers Monday when he said he wasn't "personally bothered" by North Korea's recent short-range missile tests. "My people think it could have been a violation" but "I view it differently," the president said from Japan, per Reuters. He was referring to national security advisor John Bolton's Saturday proclamation that the tests "no doubt" violated UN Security Council resolutions banning "the launch of any ballistic missiles," per CNN. That was enough of an invitation for North Korea, whose foreign ministry soon attacked Bolton. More like a "security-destroying adviser," he's "impudently poking his nose into other's internal matters" with a claim "much more than ignorant," said an unnamed spokesman.

"Perverse words always come out from the mouth of a structurally defective guy, and such a human defect deserves an earlier vanishing," the spokesman added, per Reuters and the Hill, referring to Bolton as a "war maniac" who "fabricated various provocative policies such as designation of our country as 'axis of evil,' preemptive strike and regime change." The spokesman went on to say the UN resolutions prohibiting nuclear or missile tests and all ballistic missile activities "are illegal and outrageous" and "completely deny the rights to existence and development of a sovereign state." Though some experts say ballistic missiles were launched in North Korea earlier this month, a South Korean official has said an analysis of the tests, conducted jointly with the US, is still underway. (More North Korea stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X