Chances of the planned 12 June summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un actually happening appear to be fading as North Korea returns to belligerent language to described US officials.

North Korean Foreign Ministry vice-minister Choe Son Hui called US Vice President Mike Pence a "political dummy" after he compared Libya to North Korea.  Pyongyang considers itself to be much further along with its nuclear program than Muammar Gaddafi's Libya was when it came to the negotiating table with the West.  Comparisons with Libya are also a hot button with North Korea because of Gaddafi's fate:  He cut a deal with the West, only to be overthrown and killed via a knife up the butt by a Western-backed insurgency.  In an interview with Fox News, where American conservatives go to say things they think no one else can hear, Pence reannimated the threat of political assassination by saying the Libyan scenario could happen if North Korea doesn't cooperate.

"As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice president," Ms. Choi said.

But it wasn't just North Korea pointing out Pence's ill-chosen words.

"The Libya analogy is deliberately inflammatory," said Adam Mount, the director of the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists to CNN.  "It never applied to North Korea and is useful neither to convey resolve or to set expectations on nuclear issues."

And so, while the US is sending a team to the summit site of Singapore to discuss details, Pyongyang is threatening to call it all off and warned that it would "make the US taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined".