North Korea launches missile tests, insults South Korean president

North Korea’s foreign ministry sharply criticized South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday after the country’s military fired two projectiles into the sea as part of a weapons test.

Reuters reported Friday that a foreign ministry spokesperson called Moon an “impudent guy” in an official statement Friday, and stated that the South Korean leader was “overcome with fright” following the tests.

{mosads}“His open talk about ‘dialogue’ between the North and the South under such a situation raises a question as to whether he has proper thinking faculty,” the spokesperson reportedly said.

“We have nothing to talk any more with the South Korean authorities nor have any idea to sit with them again,” the North Korean official added.

Signs of tension between the North and South come as the Trump administration has sought to set up a third bilateral summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un following one at the beginning of this year that ended without the two leaders coming to a major agreement on denuclearization.

Moon, in his own speech Thursday, explained that “momentum” for peace talks remained unshaken even despite recent weapons tests from North Korean forces, which had previously been put on hold as relations between the U.S. and Pyongyang had improved.

“In spite of a series of worrying actions taken by North Korea recently, the momentum for dialogue remains unshaken,” Moon said Thursday, according to Reuters.

Friday’s statement also comes days after North Korean officials warned the Trump administration not to deploy a new system of short-range missiles in South Korea.

“The U.S. pointed out that it is now examining a plan for deploying ground-to-ground medium-range missiles in the Asian region and South Korea has been singled out as a place for the deployment,” the country’s state news agency said in a commentary this week.

“It is a reckless act of escalating regional tension, an act that may spark off a new Cold War and arms race in the Far Eastern region to deploy a new offensive weapon in South Korea,” the broadcaster added, according to Reuters.