North Korea is fuming mad at U.S. Senator John McCain for calling their leader “crazy fat kid.” The communist nation threatened to go to war over the remarks that McCain made to MSNBC in early March.

Kim Jong-un’s weight issues

McCain was not really delving into Kim Jong-un’s weight problems – although the 33-year-old is sensitive over the issue. He made the statement because the senator finds the North Korean leader irrational. “We’re not dealing even with someone like Joseph Stalin, who had a certain rationality to his barbarity,” John McCain said, The Independent reported.

In November, Pyongyang asked Beijing for Chinese not to call the young dictator “fat.” During conversations or in social media posts, a lot of Chinese use the term “Jin San Pang” when they refer to chunky Swiss cheese fan which they also call “Kim Fatty III.” It is a play on his name which is “Jin San Fei” in Chinese which means “Kim Abundant III,” Fox News reported.

In response to North Korea’s request, China blocked Internet searches on the words “Kim Fatty the Third,” according to The Telegraph. While China gave in to Pyongyang’s request, McCain believes it is only Beijing that can control the “crazy fat kid that’s running North Korea.” He said China could stop the North Korean economy in one week.

Hurting the country’s dignity

KCNA, the state news agency of North Korea, responded by releasing the country’s Foreign Minister statement that McCain’s remarks hurt the country’s pride. The statement said that what McCain and Republican Senator Ted Cruz – who challenged that North Korea be designated a state sponsor of terrorism – said is a manifestation of their worst hostility towards North Korea’s ideology and social system.

It is short of declaring war against the communist country which Washington did in late March when the U.S. deployed powerful bombers over North Korea after a failed missile launch on March 22. Over the past 12 months, Pyongyang has launched more than 30 missiles and two nuclear bombs.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry warned the two American senators that they have to “bitterly experience the disastrous consequences to be entailed by their reckless tongue-lashing.” It added Pyongyang would push through with its sacred mission of “dealing a merciless sledge-hammer blow at those daring hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership."

However, McCain just laughed off the threat and tweeted, “What, did they want me to call him a crazy skinny kid?” Kim Jong-un’s estimated weight is about 300 pounds. He ballooned allegedly because of binge-eating and drinking to cope with insomnia and fears of assassination.