By Chung Min-uck
North Korea's slanderous verbal attacks directed at President Park Geun-hye and U.S. President Barack Obama are stirring up anti-Pyongyang sentiment here and in the United States, especially among conservative figures.
Given this, hopes for reconciliation between the reclusive country and the two allies seems to be fading quickly.
Last week, the North's state media quoted a North Korean worker who called Obama "a monkey in Africa" with a disgusting "crossbreed appearance" and said he should go to the home of monkeys before suffering further humiliation in the world of people.
In a separate dispatch about Park, the North, commenting on the U.S. president's April trip to Seoul, said Park invited "her American master reminiscent of a wicked black monkey" and called the unmarried female leader an "old prostitute coquetting with outside forces."
Joshua Stanton, an attorney and advisor to the U.S. House foreign affairs committee, and Lee Sung-yoon, assistant professor at Tufts University in U.S., opined that the North's "repellent" language is a mirror image of the reclusive country.
In a joint contribution article to CNN, Monday, they said "In North Korea, racism isn't just talk… the regime forcibly aborts or murders the babies of refugee women sent back to North Korea by China, on the presumption that the babies' fathers were Chinese, to maintain the myth of state-mandated racial purity."
Citing a U.N. report, the experts further said "Pyongyang fines women for wearing pants or riding bicycles, and forces thousands of them into sexual slavery by denying them an adequate supply of food."
"North Korea is not a problem the Obama administration can keep ignoring," they added.
Dennis Haplin, a former staff member of the U.S. House foreign affairs committee, also said in his recent article to American news magazine, Weekly Standard, "Has an American president, perhaps with the exception of wartime, ever been so demeaned by the official media of a foreign government?"
"Such crude racist and sexist language would not be tolerated from any other source."
Government officials in Seoul and Washington have also responded fiercely against North Korea's recent slurs.
"North Korea is not a real country, is it? It exists only to hold up a single person," said Kim Min-seok, Monday, in a briefing. "It is an unreal country that regularly lies and uses historically retrogressive rhetoric. That is why it must vanish."
"I don't know how many words I can use up here to describe the rhetoric . . . It's disgusting," said Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, last week, adding that the words were "offensive and ridiculous and absurd."
Many experts say Pyongyang's unprecedentedly blatant verbal attack is attributable to the insolated nation wanting to draw attention from the allies.
"Racial issues are really sensitive in the U.S.," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. "Whether good or bad the North's intention is to attract attention."
The Stalinist country has recently threatened to carry out a nuclear test and, simultaneously, called for Seoul and Washington to engage in talks.
In times of economic hardship, the North usually turns to nuclear brinkmanship and raising military tensions; and in exchanges at the negotiating table receives economic benefit from the allies.
North Korea's slanderous verbal attacks directed at President Park Geun-hye and U.S. President Barack Obama are stirring up anti-Pyongyang sentiment here and in the United States, especially among conservative figures.
Given this, hopes for reconciliation between the reclusive country and the two allies seems to be fading quickly.
Last week, the North's state media quoted a North Korean worker who called Obama "a monkey in Africa" with a disgusting "crossbreed appearance" and said he should go to the home of monkeys before suffering further humiliation in the world of people.
In a separate dispatch about Park, the North, commenting on the U.S. president's April trip to Seoul, said Park invited "her American master reminiscent of a wicked black monkey" and called the unmarried female leader an "old prostitute coquetting with outside forces."
Joshua Stanton, an attorney and advisor to the U.S. House foreign affairs committee, and Lee Sung-yoon, assistant professor at Tufts University in U.S., opined that the North's "repellent" language is a mirror image of the reclusive country.
In a joint contribution article to CNN, Monday, they said "In North Korea, racism isn't just talk… the regime forcibly aborts or murders the babies of refugee women sent back to North Korea by China, on the presumption that the babies' fathers were Chinese, to maintain the myth of state-mandated racial purity."
Citing a U.N. report, the experts further said "Pyongyang fines women for wearing pants or riding bicycles, and forces thousands of them into sexual slavery by denying them an adequate supply of food."
"North Korea is not a problem the Obama administration can keep ignoring," they added.
Dennis Haplin, a former staff member of the U.S. House foreign affairs committee, also said in his recent article to American news magazine, Weekly Standard, "Has an American president, perhaps with the exception of wartime, ever been so demeaned by the official media of a foreign government?"
"Such crude racist and sexist language would not be tolerated from any other source."
Government officials in Seoul and Washington have also responded fiercely against North Korea's recent slurs.
"North Korea is not a real country, is it? It exists only to hold up a single person," said Kim Min-seok, Monday, in a briefing. "It is an unreal country that regularly lies and uses historically retrogressive rhetoric. That is why it must vanish."
"I don't know how many words I can use up here to describe the rhetoric . . . It's disgusting," said Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, last week, adding that the words were "offensive and ridiculous and absurd."
Many experts say Pyongyang's unprecedentedly blatant verbal attack is attributable to the insolated nation wanting to draw attention from the allies.
"Racial issues are really sensitive in the U.S.," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. "Whether good or bad the North's intention is to attract attention."
The Stalinist country has recently threatened to carry out a nuclear test and, simultaneously, called for Seoul and Washington to engage in talks.
In times of economic hardship, the North usually turns to nuclear brinkmanship and raising military tensions; and in exchanges at the negotiating table receives economic benefit from the allies.
