How much more US insulting can North Korean leader take?

In this photo taken on Nov. 20, 2016, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani stands with then president-elect Donald Trump before their meeting at Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. AFP-Yonhap

By Oh Young-jin

Can North Korea's Kim Jong-un take any more U.S. public insults and go to Singapore for the next week's summit with President Donald Trump?

Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor, ardent Trump supporter and his attorney, has added gasoline to the fire of Kim's temper, which is no doubt getting shorter in the face of verbal assaults from the U.S.

Giuliani said on a trip to Israel that the North's leader begged Trump on his hands and knees for the summit.

Reports were not clear whether Giuliani, 74, made the statement on the basis of what he had heard directly from Trump or described the situation as he saw it.

The North has not made any reference to Giuliani's “on his hands and knees” remarks because he doesn't have any official position in the Trump administration.

There are no reports that the U.S. administration has made any explanation.

But Pyongyang may take it as an insult, because Giuliani is one of Trump's old friends who reports said was considered for secretary of state in the inaugural cabinet. That job went to Rex Tillerson, who was fired and replaced by Mike Pompeo.

It remains to be seen whether the North will react and how strongly.

Kim may have at least two reasons not to take the Giuliani insult in his stride.

First, the 34-year-old is treated as a demigod in the North, to the level that a senior official was fired and then killed for dozing off at a meeting Kim presided over.

Kim is the third in the dynasty started by his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, who began the 1950-1953 Korean War, and sustained by his father, Kim Jong-il, who was responsible for many terror acts. Their long reign of terror is made possible by the aura of no tolerance of dissent and challenge.

Rudy Giuliani, attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives for the White House Sports and Fitness Day event on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, May 30, 2018. REUTERS-Yonhap

Second, Giuliani's comments bear truth, coming on the heels of other disparaging remarks by U.S. officials.

The North virtually apologized to Trump and asked him to switch the summit schedule back on after Trump canceled it over “open hostility.”

Trump's cancelation followed two North Korean vice foreign ministers' remarks. Choe Son-hui threatened to nix the summit and dared the U.S. to have a nuclear duel, calling Trump's Vice President Mike Pence a “political idiot.”

Kim Kye-gwan also made a similar verbal threat. It was Kim who jumped on Trump's invitation to write, if Pyongyang changed its mind and wanted the summit.

The cause of the two's open hostility was John Bolton, Trump's National Security Adviser, who openly declared that the North would go through the denuclearization process applied to Libya.

The so-called Libyan model had Col. Muammar Gaddafi hand over his incipient nuclear program in return for security guarantees from the West. The West put the dictator out on a limb and rebels killed him.

That would be the worst-case scenario for Kim.

No less insulting is Pompeo's promise for North Koreans to eat meat, if it denuclearizes. They obviously lack protein in their diet but promoting meat as a gift to the North may sound insulting to its leadership because it hits home their incompetence.

U.S. insults are particularly damaging to Kim because they make him look vulnerable and less fearsome in the eyes of the North's elite, who already fear they may lose their privileges thanks to the transformation of the North under the young dictator.

Recent reports have it that Kim conducted a major reshuffle of the North's army, one of the key stakeholders pivotal to his continued rule, a move that is widely seen as an effort to weed out fifth columns and consolidate his power before taking on fundamental changes.

If U.S. insults do not prompt an internal chasm in Kim's rule, North Korea would certainly look desperate to the Americans with a few days to go before the summit.