President Trump lashed back early Friday at North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, who called him a “mentally deranged US dotard” in an escalation of the war of words between the two leaders.

“Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!” Trump tweeted.

Trump’s latest volley comes a day after Kim unleashed a stream of invective in a statement carried by the state news agency in which he threatened that the US president would “pay dearly” for his threats.

In a combative address to the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump mocked Kim as a “Rocket Man” on a “suicide mission” and said that if “forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

Kim said Trump is “unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country.” He also described the president as “a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire.”

“I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech calling for totally destroying the DPRK,” read the statement carried by North’s official Korean Central News Agency from Pyongyang.

DPRK is the abbreviation of the communist country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The rogue regime also declared that it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, Moscow is very worried by the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula caused by the hostile words between the US and the Hermit Kingdom, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

“Moscow is convinced that there is no alternative to a political and diplomatic settlement of the North Korean problem,” he told a conference call with reporters, according to Reuters.

He said the situation was being further aggravated by “the swapping of silly statements full of threats.”

With Post wires