North Korea resorts to school yard name-calling after Trump’s State of the Union address

North Korea has responded to President Trump’s remarks about the nation’s poor human rights record with name-calling rhetoric, in a move that seems out of character even for the historically aggressive regime.

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has assumed a more aggressive tone toward Kim Jong Un’s North Korean regime, prompting some to criticize him for stooping to the reclusive dictator’s level in their public interactions. At last week’s State of the Union address, however, Trump’s speech did not include his usual name calling directed at North Korea’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, but based on the reclusive state’s public response, Trump may have cut Kim deeper using traditional political showmanship than he ever did calling him, “Rocket Man.”

No matter how desperately Trump may try to defame the dignified and just system in the DPRK with the worst incentive, he cannot deodorize the nasty smell from his dirty body woven with frauds, sexual abuses and all other crimes nor keep the U.S. from rushing to the final destruction.” North Korea’s most widely distributed state-owned newspaper wrote following the State of the Union address.

It went on to say that the “dolt-like Trump should know that his backbone would be broken, to say nothing of a ‘bloody nose,’ and the empire of America would go to hell and the short history of the US would end forever, the moment he destroys even a single blade of grass on this land.”

The editorial goes on to accuse Trump of laying the ground work in the minds of the public for military action against North Korea, which is one accusation that many America pundits have echoed.

There is a foolish attempt to make pretense for provocation and pave the road for invasion ahead of conducting the military adventure ‘bloody nose strategy,'” the paper wrote.

Rumors have swirled around Washington for weeks that Trump and his cabinet may be considering what has been dubbed a “bloody nose” attack on North Korea, likely similar in method to the ballistic missile strike Trump ordered against a Syrian airfield responsible for a chemical weapon attack carried out on civilians in rebel controlled territory. The concept is effectively to take only limited military action to make a point, without igniting war on the Korean Peninsula. Many see the region as a powder keg already, and fear such a “bloody nose” tactic will be met with all out, and potentially nuclear, war.

During the State of the Union address, President Trump called out the North Korean government for their abysmal human rights record, using the parents of the former North Korean detainee who died days after his release, Otto Warmbier, as well as double amputee North Korean defector, Ji Seong Ho, to punctuate his remarks with real faces, allowing the nation to appreciate the human cost of the horrors of Kim’s regime.

No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea,” Trump said on Tuesday. “We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and our allies.”

Throughout the first year of Trump’s presidency, he has maintained a harder line in public discussion of Kim Jong Un’s North Korean regime, however the tone and direction of his statements during Tuesday’s speech seemed to emphasize the demand for a denuclearized North Korea less, and focus on human rights violations within the nation more. This shift in tactic may be the early stages of a campaign intended to justify taking military action in the minds of voters, who are often swayed more by human interest stories than they are with broad concerns about national security.