North Korean leader hits back at US threat

SEOUL

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un issued a direct statement Friday that attacked U.S. President Donald Trump and warned America could "pay dearly" for threatening military action.

Trump's speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York earlier this week warned that the U.S. may be forced to "totally destroy" the North.

The American leader also referred to his North Korean counterpart as a "rocket man on a suicide mission" following a series of banned nuclear and missile tests.

Pyongyang seems particularly sensitive about insults against its authoritarian leadership and has shown no desire to abandon its development of weapons of mass destruction program despite strengthened UN sanctions in the wake of the reclusive state's sixth-ever nuke test on Sept. 3.

"Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation.

I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire," Kim said in an English-language statement released by state-run KCNA news agency.

"We will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history," he cautioned.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho later elaborated on what Kim meant while speaking to reporters at the UN General Assembly in New York.

"It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific," Ri explained. "We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un."

Not to be outdone, Trump responded to Kim’s treats with those of his own.

“Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!,” he wrote on Twitter.