North Korea 'boiling with hatred' as anti-US drumbeat steps up

North Koreans are constantly told the US wants to destroy their country - but have no idea what their sworn enemy's leader looks like.

There's never been a single image of Donald Trump published by North Korea's strictly controlled state media - either on television or in newspapers.

When the US President made his now infamous threat to respond to North Korean aggression with "fire and fury" , the phrase itself was briefly paraphrased and reported, but details of the man who made it were not.

The bombastic billionaire much caricatured throughout the rest of the world is nothing more than a name without a personality in North Korea.

A contact in Pyongyang told me: "At his inauguration people asked me, 'what does he look like?'

"They are familiar with Hillary Clinton and her appearance but they don't know anything about the character of Donald Trump."

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People in North Korea have lived through this many times before - a war of words between their leader and the West.

But although the criticism of America is near constant from North Korea's regime, I'm told there has been a sense of intensification in recent months.

Trucks fitted with loudspeakers blaring rants condemning the US have been more active than usual on the streets of capital Pyongyang.

It's a drumbeat North Koreans are used to hearing but it seems more intense than usual.

The loudspeakers also shout that North Korea will do everything it can to defend itself .

A newspaper headline in Pyongyang proclaims people in the country are "boiling with hatred".

The all-powerful North Korean leader Kim Jong Un certainly is.

At least that's what he portrays.

It's a stance which helps keep him in power - continuing to declare the need to be strong and armed with nuclear weapons, because the country's enemies will never give up on plans to invade their land.