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TRUMP LIKENED TO "A DOG BARKING" BY NORTH KOREA'S TOP ENVOY
By CHOE SANG-HUNSEPT. 21, 2017

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s foreign minister likened President Trump to a “dog barking,” ridiculing the American leader for threatening to “totally destroy” his country if it persists in its nuclear and missile threats.

“Back home, we have a saying: The dog barks, but the caravan continues,” Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters in New York on Wednesday when he was asked about Mr. Trump’s comment. “If he thought he could scare us with the noise of a dog barking, well, he should be daydreaming.”

Mr. Ri arrived in New York on Wednesday to attend the United Nations General Assembly, where Mr. Trump gave a speech on Tuesday in which he called North Korea a “band of criminals” and its leader, Kim Jong-un, a “Rocket Man” on “a suicide mission.”

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Mr. Trump said.

When asked about Mr. Trump’s Rocket Man comment, Mr. Ri said: “I am sorry for his aides.”

Mr. Ri was scheduled to speak at the General Assembly on Friday.

Other than Mr. Ri’s remarks, there has been no reaction from the North Korean government or Mr. Kim. But on Thursday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that Mr. Kim had been visiting orchards.

“I feel so good I feel like dancing,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying, while looking at branches hung low with ripe apples and other fruits.

North Korea, a master of tough talk, often resorts to colorful Korean proverbs in its propaganda at home or in its diatribes against its external enemies. Loyalty to Mr. Kim, for example, comes as naturally to North Koreans as “streams knowing which gully to travel to reach the sea,” it says.

The dog and caravan idiom is a favorite when North Korean propagandists want to dismiss America as an inconsequential mutt yapping at what they call their country’s surging march toward mastering nuclear armaments.

In North Korea’s official news media, writers routinely deploy punchy metaphors originating in Korean proverbs to jab at enemies.

When South Korean and United States troops engage in their annual joint exercises, propagandists liken them to “fools rushing into flame with hay bundles on their back.”

Animals, especially dogs, appear prominently in these proverbs.

When they think the Americans don’t make sense, North Koreans say, “Even a dead cow would sit up and laugh.” About Japan, they say, “However hard it tries, a crow can never become a pigeon.”

When President George W. Bush called North Korea part of an “axis of evil” in 2002, the country called him “a puppy knowing no fear of the tiger.”

In a common North Korean school textbook fable, however, the roles are reversed: the arrogant tiger (the Americans) is repelled by the daring porcupine bristling with its needles (North Korea with its missiles).
-NY TIMES, September 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/world/asia/north-korea-trump-dog.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news