North Korea again turns insults to US secretary of state

After years of personally insulting leaders of the United States, South Korea and others it sees as being in league with "the Great Satan," North Korea again turned its attention to the U.S. Secretary of State on Wednesday, this time labeling "him" a "wolf donning the mask of sheep."  John Kerry also has a "hideous lantern jaw," said a statement from the North’s defense commission carried by the country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency. Only last month Kerry appeared to publicly celebrate a break in the kind of insults so often heard in previous years, stating, as he returned from talks in China -- considered a closest ally of the North -- that the reclusive state had become "quieter." But it appears a congratulatory message to the South from Kerry on Korea's 69th anniversary of liberation from Japan has particularly aroused North Korean attention, Wednesday's KCNA report condemning the gesture as an "unbearable mockery and insult."

Following President Barack Obama’s visit to the South in April, the North had shocked international onlookers with a series of racist remarks -- including calling the American president a "wicked black monkey."

Soon after, it also referred to South Korean President Park as a "crafty prostitute," in what many analysts viewed as a sign of North Korea’s displeasure at the strengthening Seoul-Washington ties.

Kerry is not the first U.S. Secretary of State to fall victim to the North's wrath -- Hillary Clinton was described as looking like "a pensioner going shopping" in 2009, the year after Pyongyang described former President George W. Bush as "a chicken soaked in the rain."