May 09, 2017 10:49 AM UTC

Korean Translation Assistance Needed, Cory Gardner Edition

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• by: Colorado Pols

A war of over-the-top words between Sen. Cory Gardner and the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea this week is serving up great joke fodder, as Denver7’s Blair Miller reports:

U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner has drawn the attention and ire of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after calling the volatile leader a “whack job” in a TV interview last week.

Gardner made the comments last week on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, when he said “most people agree” that Kim is a “whack job.”

“This is a crazed maniac at the helm of one of the world’s nuclear regimes, trying to become a nuclear regime,” he said. “We shouldn’t be in the position of flattery.”

Days later, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency responded, saying the Republican senator had “perpetrated wicked blasphemy” against Kim, according to a translation by UPI.

“On May 3, some [expletive] by the name of Cory Gardner, who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, perpetrated wicked blasphemy against our supreme dignity during an interview with NBC,” UPI’s translation of the KCNA statement read.

“For a psychopath like the [expletive] Gardner, to hurl evil accusations at our highest dignity, is a serious problem…That a man mixed in with human dirt like Gardner, who has lost basic judgment and body hair, could only spell misfortune for the United States.”

The colorful translation from UPI News that described Gardner as having lost “basic judgment and body hair” is funny stuff, but we’re wondering about its accuracy–the original English-language release of the statement from North Korea’s state-run news agency reads less awkwardly:

The slandering words made by Cory Gardner, a man tantamount to a mentally deranged, is a serious provocation that can never be overlooked.

It is misfortune of the U.S. that among its politicians is such human reject as Cory Gardner devoid of proper appearance as human being, to say nothing of elementary judging ability.

We don’t know which translation is more accurate–it’s possible that the North Korean media would use stronger language in Korean than in an official translation into another language. We also don’t know if Sen. Gardner has in fact lost his body hair.

On second thought, we probably don’t want to know.