North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile on September 16, 2017.

:: North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un said in a rare statement on Friday the North will consider the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the United States in response to US President Donald Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” the North.

Calling Trump “mentally deranged” and his comments “the most ferocious declaration of a war in history,” Kim said his UN speech on Tuesday confirmed Pyongyang’s nuclear programme has been “the correct path”.

“His remarks … have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last,” Kim said in the statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency.

“As a man representing the DPRK and on behalf of the dignity and honor of my state and people and on my own, I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech,” Kim said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.