As North Korea get closer to what observers believe will be a fourth nuclear test, Pyongyang is under fire for diatribes in its official state media outlets that betray a particularly loathsome racist and sexist world view right out of the 1850s.  It’s a rare view into the brutal dictatorship’s ideology.

“While the North Korean Government-controlled media are distinguished by their histrionics, these comments are particularly ugly and disrespectful,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.

South Korea already expressed its revulsion for the editorials that referred to President Park Geun-hye as “old prostitute”.  Now the US is blasting an article that said President Barack Obama was a “crossbreed with unclear blood”, has “the figure of monkey”, and ought to “live with a group of monkeys in the world’s largest African natural zoo”.  A separate article called Mr. Obama a “wicked black monkey”.  That was the milder of the two.

Interestingly, the first article was not translated into English, as is the case with most items from the North’s state-run news agency.  It suggests that North Korean racism is more in line with the fascism displayed by Japan during World War II than with Stalinism in the Soviet Union, with which is it most frequently compared.

But, “names will never hurt me”.  Nuclear weapons, those’ll sting.

Pyongyang is readying another nuclear weapons test, and Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin told reporters he believes the North is capable of detonating a nuclear device at any moment.  US spy satellites detected increased activity around the tunnel entrances to the North’s main nuclear testing facility underneath a mountain near the Russian and Chinese borders.  North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, and 2013.