North Korea and the USA have been trading sabre-rattling threats for months now with despot Kim Jong-un and US president Donald Trump regularly issuing increasingly bizarre ultimatums.
Last week Mr Trump said he would “totally destroy” North Korea, prompting Kim to slate the American leader as a “deranged dotard”.
The dictator added in a final put-down: “A frightened dog barks loudest.”
Mr Trump has not responded to this latest jab, however, after becoming embroiled in a row over American football players protesting police brutality and racism by kneeling during the national anthem at matches.
brutality and racism by kneeling during the national anthem at matches.
Rather than quietly wait for the next instalment of the ever-tightening spiral of threat and counter-threat, North Korea have instead issued another jibe at the US president.
A Pyongyang-based propaganda paper described Mr Trump as like a “moth attracted to fire” in a ferocious attack on Sunday.
The newspaper featured quotes from Sin Kyong Choi of North Korea’s Ministry of Coal in what was a thinly-veiled state-approved message.
Sin said: “Trump’s unprecedented rude nonsense one has never heard from any of his predecessors clearly showed the world his true colour.”
The politician described blasted Mr Trump as a “political layman”, “wrecker of world peace” and claimed Americans called him “top lunatic of Washington” and the “Pinocchio president”.
The ferocious article claimed the only answer North Korea could give would be a violent and fiery one.
READ MORE: Does North Korea have nuclear weapons?
Sin continued: “There is no remedy but a shower of fire for such war maniac running amuck like a moth attracted to fire.”
The article in the propaganda rag also included outrageous quotes from Ri Chang Yong of Pyongyang University.
They said Mr Trump was a “villain” who would be met with extreme force.
READ MORE: Will the USA attack North Korea?
Ri said: “Trump, who began his presidency with troubling the whole world, is not a politician but a villain.
“Not content with taking the most barbarous and brutal sanctions against the DPRK, he even let loose the unpardonable blast that he would ‘totally destroy’ the DPRK.
“The DPRK possessed of the strongest nuclear weapons and military hardware will surely and mercilessly exterminate those Trump-led war maniacs.”