Kim calls Donald a 'dotard' - DAY OF THUNDER North Korea and US trade low blows, so do Pakistan and India

TT, North Korea's Kim Jong-un has called President Donald Trump a "mentally deranged US dotard" and vowed the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history", which was interpreted as a threat to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

In the first direct response to Trump's threat to annihilate North Korea if it did not behave, Kim said in a statement: "I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard (senile or weak old man) with fire."

"A frightened dog barks louder," Kim said. "He is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician."

Trump responded with some name-calling of his own. On Twitter, the President called Kim "obviously a madman". In his UN speech on Tuesday, Trump had called Kim a "Rocket Man" on "a suicide mission".

The rejoinder by Kim, who is about half as old as Trump, 71, added to the lexicon of the North Korean leader's choice of insults in the escalating bombast between the two and pushed North's brinkmanship to a new, potentially more perilous, level.

In a country where the leader is essentially portrayed as a god, Kim's decision to respond personally to Trump and pledge reprisals escalated the standoff over the North's nuclear programme in a way that neither he nor his predecessors had done before.

Although the statement made no mention of nuclear weapons, in the context of a political system built on a cult of personality, Kim's intervention appeared to sharply reduce the possibility that his government might retreat or compromise, even in the face of war.

At the UN, secretary-general Antonio Guterres called for statesmanship to avoid "sleepwalking" into a war.

Although Kim is often quoted by official North Korean news media, it is highly unusual for him to issue a statement in his name. Kim's father and grandfather, who ruled North Korea before him, never made such a statement.

In North Korea, the supreme leader's statement carries a weight that surpasses any other formal document. In effect, Kim, whose cult-like leadership rests upon his perceived daring towards North Korea's external enemies, has turned the nation's standoff with the US into a personal duel with Trump, analysts said.

"Now that Trump has... insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy" North Korea, Kim said, "we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history."

Asked by reporters in New York what Kim might have meant by the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure", North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho said that only Kim would know.

But Ri added that he thought the North might be considering the largest test of a hydrogen bomb ever in the Pacific Ocean.

KCNA, the North Korean state news agency, made a rare criticism of official Chinese media, saying their comments on the North's nuclear programme had damaged ties and suggested Beijing, Pyongyang's only major ally, had sided with Washington.