The war of words between North Korea and the United States refuses to die down and the leaders of the two nations have been calling each other names after Pyongyang tested a hydrogen bomb on September 3. While this test drew the ire of several nations, US President Donald Trump went a step ahead and labelled North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a "Rocket Man."
The latter has since been using the choicest of words for Trump, the latest one being an "old lunatic." The fresh salvo comes as North Korea has accused Trump of exploiting Otto Warmbier's death. The US president had said that the American student had been tortured while he was in Pyongyang's custody, which eventually led to his death.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry has now accused the US of "luring and pushing" Warmbier into breaking the nation's laws. "Trump and his clique, for their anti-DPRK propaganda, are again exploiting the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who had been under reform through labour for the criminal act he committed against the DPRK and died after returning to the US," the statement issued via KCNA said, according to AFP.
Pyongyang has also accused the US of conspiring against the recluse nation and believes that the country had sent the 22-year-old student to North Korea on a secret criminal mission.
"The fact that the old lunatic Trump and his riff-raff slandered the sacred dignity of our supreme leadership, using bogus data full of falsehood and fabrications, only serves to redouble the surging hatred of our army and people towards the US and their will to retaliate thousand-fold," it said.
Warmbier died on June 19, 2017, after he was sent back to the US from North Korea in a state of coma. The American student had in 2016 visited Pyongyang as a tourist but was arrested and put in jail in the country.
While Warmbier's parents, as well as Trump, believed that the student had been tortured in Pyongyang, a US medical examiner said that there were no such visible signs.
Warmbier's parents had said that his teeth seem to have been "rearranged" and his hands and feet too were disfigured. "They kidnapped Otto, they tortured him, they intentionally injured him. They are not victims, they are terrorists," Fred Warmbier said on the programme "Fox and Friends." Post this statement, Trump too accused North Korea of torturing the American and said: "Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea."
However, coroner Lakshmi Sammarco after examining the body said that there were no freshly broken bones and it did not look like he had been tortured. "We don't know what happened to him. That's the bottom line," she said. "We're never going to know, unless the people who were there come forward and say, 'This is what happened to Otto.'"
North Korea has earlier said that he suffered from botulism and then went into a coma.
"I felt very comfortable that there wasn't any evidence of trauma" to the teeth, Sammarco said, according to BBC. She also explained that while his body did have a few small scars, the body and skin were in "excellent condition" considering he was bedridden for over a year.
