DONALD Trump has been “sentenced to death” by North Korean state media for calling Kim Jong-un “short and fat”.

The opinion piece in the Asian country’s ruling party newspaper called the US President a “coward” for cancelling a visit to the North Korean border, The Guardian reports.

“The worst crime for which he can never be pardoned is that he dared [to] malignantly hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership,” the editorial said.

“He should know that he is just a hideous criminal sentenced to death by the Korean people,” it added.

It comes after Mr Trump said he would never call Kim Jong-un “short and fat”, after months of trading personal insults and threats of war with the North Korean leader.

“Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’ Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend — and maybe someday that will happen!”

Trump tweeted from Hanoi, the latest leg on his tour of Asia.

The state media attack also took a dig at Trump’s failure to tour the demilitarised zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas — a traditional stop-off for senior US officials visiting the South.

Trump’s helicopter taking him to the DMZ had turned back after just five minutes due to bad weather.

“It wasn’t the weather,” the editorial said: “He was just too scared to face the glaring eyes of our troops.”

Despite trading insults, Mr Trump said earlier this week that a friendship between himself and Kim Jong-un is “a possibility” and would be “good for the world”.

“Strange things happen in life. That might be a strange thing that happens. But it is certainly a possibility,” Mr Trump said at a news conference in Vietnam.

“If that did happen, it would be a good thing for, I can tell you, for North Korea. But it would also be good for lots of other places, and it would be good for the world.”

But his “short and fat” tweet seems to have rattled North Korea.

The comment followed a day in which North Korea lobbed rhetorical bombs at Mr Trump, calling him a “warmonger” and claiming his trip to Asia was designed “for confrontation.”

Mr Trump is trying to demonise and undermine North Korea’s push for nuclear weapons, the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

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

“Reckless remarks by a dotard like Trump will never scare us or put a stop to our advance,” the statement said. Instead, Trump’s trip has pushed the country “to speed up the effort to complete our nuclear force.”

Tensions over North Korea’s weapons program have spiked this year, as Pyongyang carried out a sixth nuclear test, test-fired dozens of missiles, and threatened to fire them near the US territory of Guam.