Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a "fool" and a "son of a bitch" days before hosting an international meeting certain to address Pyongyang's long-range missile tests.
Duterte held nothing back on Wednesday in rebuking Kim for "playing with dangerous toys", setting the stage for next week's rare get-together to be attended by foreign ministers of all the countries involved in the stand-off on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea is determined to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and officials in Washington say Saturday's test of an intercontinental ballistic missile shows it may be able to reach most of the country.
"This Kim Jong-un, a fool ... he is playing with dangerous toys, that fool," Duterte told tax officials in a speech.
"That chubby face that looks kind. That son of a bitch. If he commits a mistake, the Far East will become an arid land. It must be stopped, this nuclear war.
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"A limited confrontation and it blows up here, I will tell you, the fallout can deplete the soil, the resources and I don't know what will happen to us."
This year, Duterte is chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and on Monday his foreign minister will host the ASEAN Regional Forum, which brings together 27 countries that include Australia, China, India, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea and the United States.
