Pyongyang blasts Park in sensational press report

North Korea yesterday blasted the proposals President Park Geun-hye made about unification in Dresden last week during her trip to Europe.

The Rodong Sinmun, the official mouthpiece of the regime’s ruling Workers’ Party published a slew of scathing insults against the South Korean president in its April 1 issue.

In the article, titled “Wash your nose before you tease your mouth,” the Communist government ridiculed the ideas President Park recommended in Germany as steps toward unification.

“The leader of South Korea severely slandered us with some kind of unification blueprint, something that is an unbearable mockery and an insult against the same people,” it said. “As a matter of fact, the unification that Park Geun-hye pursues is an antinational unification system meant to hurt our respectful ideas and our system.”

The paper went so far as to call President Park an “eccentric old spinster,” a “cold-blooded animal” and a “countryside woman,” adding that she “has not even gotten married and given birth to a child.”

The verbal attack comes a day after North Korea, through its state-run Korean Central News Agency, denounced Park’s declaration in Dresden as a “compilation of trivial junk.”

Pyongyang’s escalated level of angry rhetoric toward Seoul breaks the accord made between the two countries in mid-February at the meeting between high-ranking officials from both sides “to stop slander and insults against each other to enhance mutual understanding and trust.”

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification issued an official statement in regard to the report yesterday morning.

“North Korea is displaying actions that are far from common sense, using expressions that even the most vulgar hooligans would not dare speak about our national leader’s diplomatic activities,” it said. “While it argues that South Korea should stop slandering and smearing [the regime’s] highest leader, it has disparaged our national leader - a clear sign of how self-contradictory North Korea is.”

BY SEO JI-EUN [spring@joongang.co.kr]