North Korea: Trump’s UN speech likened to ‘the sound of a dog barking’

North Korea’s foreign minister delivered his response to US president Donald Trump’s threat to destroy the North Korean regime, likening it to the sound of a “dog barking”.

Ri Yong Ho gave his country’s reponse to Trump’s UN speech, in comments to reporters outside his hotel in New York.

“If he was thinking he could scare us with the sound of a dog barking, that’s really a dog dream, he said. In Korean, a ‘dog dream’ is one that is absurd and makes little to no sense.

During his speech to the UN on Tuesday, Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea if they threatened the US and its allies. He said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who he referred to as “rocket man”, is “on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime”.

When asked how he felt about Trump’s comments, Ri said: “I feel sorry for his aides”.

Though Trump’s speeches have raised some eyebrows before, threatening another country with destruction was unprecedented for a US presidents diplomats were taken aback. North Korean diplomats were not present for Trump’s UN speech.

Trump’s controversial and confrontational speech came after months of rising tensions in Pyongyang, culminating in North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear test and the launch of two ballistic missiles over northern Japan.

As the US and the North traded verbal barbs, Washington’s allies in the region risked angering China, by dismissing the prospect of mere dialogue with the North.

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told the UN general assembly that previous talks had resulted in nothing and called for a global blockade, which would deny Pyongyang access to “goods, funds, people and technology” for its missile and nuclear programmes.

Abe said pressure in the form of sanctions was preferable to negotiation:

“We must make North Korea abandon all nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner. What is needed to do is not dialogue, but pressure”, said Abe, whose entire speech was devoted to Pyongyang.

Time is running out, Abe warned, as he mentioned the failure of a 1994 agreement between the North and the US, to freeze Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, and the stopping of six-party talks almost a decade ago; all of which were proof that the regime would not respond to dialogue.

North Korea had “no intention whatsoever of abandoning its nuclear or missile development”, he said. “For North Korea, dialogue was the best means of deceiving us ands buying time. In what hope of success are we now repeating the very same failure a third time?” he said.