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North Korean Media Backs Donald Trump and Calls Hillary Clinton 'Thick Headed'

A column carried on Tuesday by DPRK Today, one of the reclusive state's mouthpieces, described Trump as a "wise politician" and the right choice for US voters in the November 8 US presidential election.
Photo par Reuters

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has received his latest endorsement, this time from abroad. North Korea weighed in on the upcoming election and backed the candidate this week in local media, praising him as "a prescient presidential candidate" who can liberate Americans living under daily fear of nuclear attack by the North.

A column carried on Tuesday by DPRK Today, one of the reclusive and dynastic state's mouthpieces, described Trump as a "wise politician" and the right choice for US voters in the November 8 US presidential election.

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It described his most likely Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as "thick-headed Hillary" over her proposal to apply the Iran model of wide sanctions to resolve the nuclear weapons issue on the Korean peninsula.

Trump instead has said he was prepared to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program, and that China should also help solve the problem, according to Reuters.

North Korea, known officially as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is under UN sanctions over its past nuclear tests. South Korea and the United States say its calls for dialogue are meaningless until it takes steps to end its nuclear ambitions.

DPRK Today also said Trump's suggestion that the United States should pull its troops from South Korea until Seoul pays more was the way to achieve Korean unification.

"It turns out that Trump is not the rough-talking, screwy, ignorant candidate they say he is, but is actually a wise politician and a prescient presidential candidate," said the column, written by a China-based Korean scholar identified as Han Yong Muk.

DPRK Today is among a handful of news sites run by the isolated government in Pyongyang, although its content is not always handled by the main state-run media.

The media outlet said that promising to resolve issues on the Korean peninsula through "negotiations and not war" was the best option for America, which it said is "living every minute and second on pins and needles in fear of a nuclear strike" by North Korea.

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The North has for years called for the withdrawal of US troops from the South as the first step towards peace on the Korean peninsula and demanded Washington sign a peace treaty to replace the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

Its frequently strident rhetoric also often threatens nuclear strikes against South Korea and the United States.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that three North Korean women who fled a restaurant they worked at in China have arrived in South Korea, according to Yonhap news agency on Wednesday quoting an unnamed government source.

The women, one aged 28 and two 29, fled the North Korean restaurant in Shanxi province and made their way to Thailand from where they flew to the South, Yonhap said.

South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles political ties with theNorth, could not confirm the report. Its National Intelligence Service, which conducts initial screening of North Korean defectors, declined to comment. The ministry said last week that some North Korean workers had recently fled their jobs in an overseas restaurant run by the North, without identifying the number or location.

The case followed the defection of 13 North Korean workers from a restaurant run by the North in China in April, which the South described as unprecedented.

North Korea accused South Korea of a "hideous abduction" in that case.

About 340 defectors from the North arrived in the South in the first three months of this year, according to Unification Ministry data. A total of about 29,000 North Korean defectors have arrived in the South as of March, including 1,276 last year, with numbers declining since a 2009 peak.

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