North Korea pressed on with its war of words with President Trump on Saturday, calling Trump’s trip to Asia a “warmonger’s visit” that “begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.”

“His current trip to our surrounding region is a warmonger’s visit for confrontation to rid the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] of its self-defensive nuclear deterrence,” a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

“Trump, during his visit, laid bare his true nature as destroyer of the world peace and stability and begged for a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.”

{mosads}

The statement came as Trump visited Vietnam in the fourth leg of his 12-day trip across Asia, where he has called for countries to unite to confront the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.

Before arriving in Vietnam on Friday, Trump met with leaders in Japan, South Korea and China about the need to rein in Pyongyang, which has accelerated the pace of its missile tests in recent months and detonated in September what North Korean officials claimed was a hydrogen bomb.

While Trump and lawmakers in Washington have pushed to tighten sanctions on North Korea, the president has also engaged in a series of bitter exchanges with the reclusive country’s government and has at times appeared to threaten to use military force against the North.

North Korea fired back at Trump on Saturday, defending its development of nuclear weapons as a “righteous and inevitable choice” that has only been bolstered by the U.S. president’s “lunatic remarks.”

“The reckless remarks by a dotard like Trump can never frighten us or put a stop to our advance,” the foreign ministry statement said.