North Korea's self-proclaimed Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, released a statement on Friday where he called President Trump a "frightened dog" and a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard". The statement followed President Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly where he threatened to "totally destroy North Korea." Both countries have been exchanging threats since Trump took the Oval Office. Saturday night, Trump continued to troll the North Korean regime in response to the DPRK's foreign minister who spoke at the UN on the same day. Trump said on Twitter that if the foreign minister was echoing Kim Jong-un's threats that "they" would not be around for very much longer.

Threats: from Guam to the Pacific Ocean

Many of Trump's critics have expanded their criticism to include the level of brinksmanship that Kim Jong-un and Trump had reached. Trump's threat to destroy North Korea is in very much in line with his threat to unleash nuclear war, which is a break away from more subtle diplomacy enacted by previous administrations. The world saw the limits of those extremes when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- the official name of the North Korean government -- threatened to attack Guam with ballistic missiles in July.

At the most, the DPRK said they would land the missiles near the country's shores with a detailed plan before they pulled back saying that they would wait to see what the "foolish Yankees" did next. In addition to the Supreme Leader's recent statement, his foreign minister also posed a more direct threat by saying that the DPRK government would test a nuclear weapon in the Pacific Ocean.

Trump called Kim Jong-un "rocket man" during his UN speech which U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley applauded as a trump branded phrase that everyone is using now. She uses that as proof that the insult worked.

Kim Jong-un takes threats personally

The DPRK's threat followed recent reports that the regime had tested out a hydrogen bomb in North Korea on September 2, which was said to be the biggest nuclear test yet.

President Trump followed his speech with signing executive orders on Thursday that put more sanctions against the "Hermit Kingdom", but he continued to berate the North Korean leader on Friday by calling him a "total nut job", a "maniac" and a "madman". In the Supreme Leader's statement, he considered Trump's insults as a "ferocious declaration of war in history". In one report by the New York Times titled: "North Korea hits new level of Brinksmanship in reacting to Trump," analysts are saying that it's unlikely that Kim Jong-un would stand down now as he sees his reputation as being on the line.

This appears to be the case since he made a public statement on North Korean state media. While analysts mark the differences in this exchange against others made in the past, they also point out that Trump's recent trolling has made the U.S.

look more like the aggressor than Pyongyang. One expert on Korea, Lee Sung-yoon -- from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said that President Trump has given Kim Jong-un a "freebie" to respond to the U.S. in a way where he would be able to claim self-defense.
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