Sick puppy and mad dog

This time, U.S. President Donald Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a “sick puppy.” The name-calling came after the North test-fired the Hwasong-15 on Wednesday, a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of striking the mainland United States. A sick puppy is a baby dog that is so feeble that feeds on its own vomiting. Kim Jong Un, who once called Mr. Trump a “mad dog,” may find his new nickname more insulting than the one he gave to Mr. Trump because a mad dog is sprightly at least.

President Trump has called Kim Jong Un a “mad man” multiple times, and the naming began to become more disparaging. In September, the U.S. president called Kim a “little rocket man” in his keynote speech for the UN General Assembly. Calling him a “sick puppy” is also in the same vein. However, whenever the North Korean leader was cooperative, President Trump would give him a credit, calling him a “pretty smart cookie.”

The “little rocket man” in Pyongyang retorted back, calling the U.S. president a “dotard.” While it is unclear exactly what Korean word Kim Jong Un used, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s propaganda outlet, translated it into “dotard.” According to the AP News, the KCNA used the same Korean word to refer to the protesters of the Union of the Korean Neoliberal Extremists, who supported former South Korean President Park Geun-hye when she was facing impeachment.

Thanks to North Korea, a country once called an “outpost” by former U.S. President George W. Bush, such an antiquated expression‎ as “dotard” has found new relevance with the contemporary Americans. A North Korean defector who studied English literature at Kim Il Sung University once quipped that a North Korean student majoring in English is like a Mongolian navy solider. Mongolia is an inland country, so its navy soldiers rarely have any chance for real military exercise. Students of English literature in North Korea study English mainly from books, hardly given any opportunity to exercise the language for everyday use. Therefore, it is possible that the North Korean news outlet may have adopted the English words from a Shakespeare or a Chaucer’s poem as if they were everyday English vocabulary. This journalist wonders what expression‎ Pyongyang will come up with this time against “sick puppy.”