- State news agency posted saber-rattling anti-U.S. statement
- Claimed it would attack 'citadels' of United States including The Pentagon
- Also said government officials dictated content of pulled film The Interview
North
Korea has threatened more attacks against the U.S. government and other
American institutions in the wake of the hack on Sony which cancelled
the release of The Interview.
The
government - which was outraged by the film showing the assassination
of leader Kim Jong Un - also claimed to have 'clear evidence' that the
U.S. government engineered the project as a 'propaganda' attack against
North Korea.
In a ranting post published by the state news agency KCNA,
Korean authorities hit back in an escalating war of words in which they
say they will 'blow up' the White House - while bizarrely continuing to
deny they have anything to do with the cyber attacks on Sony.
Not
happy: Officials in Kim Jong Un's government posted the aggressive
message, which claims that the U.S. government planned the controversial
film, and threatening more attacks
'Insulting their dignity': North Korea was incensed by the planned film, in which dictator Kim Jong Un is blown up
Referring
to the United States as a 'cesspool of terrorism', the communist
dictatorship said that it has already lashed out at the 'citadels of the
U.S. imperialists', naming the White House and Pentagon in particular.
A release, translated from Korean, said: 'The DPRK [North Korea] has already launched the toughest counteraction.
'Nothing
is a more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie
production company is the target of this counteraction.'
'Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans.
'The
army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to stand in confrontation
with the U.S. in all war spaces including cyber warfare space to blow up
those citadels.'
But
despite its bellicose language, the state continued to deny it had
anything to do with the original hack, for which a group calling
themselves the Guardians of Peace has claimed credit.
Government
stooges? The North Koreans claimed to have evidence director Seth
Rogen, left with co-star James Franco, were given instructions by White
House officials
In the crosshairs: The North Koreans listed the White House among their targets, or 'citadels'
North
Korea called the hack a 'righteous deed' - and reiterated that it
'highly esteems' the attack - but said it had no idea where it came
from.
FBI
officials have explicitly linked the attack to the Korean regime,
saying that technical details from the hack have Korean hallmarks.
But Kim Jong Un's officials responded by calling FBI claims a 'fabrication', and describing U.S. actions as 'gangster-like'.
According
to the post, the North Korean government is also convinced that
directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were under direct instruction
from U.S. officials, who told them to include extra scenes to 'insult
the dignity' of North Korea.
They
said: 'It is said that the movie was conceived and produced according
to the 'guidelines' of the U.S. authorities who contended that such
movies hurting the dignity of the DPRK supreme leadership and inciting
terrorism against it would be used in an effective way as "propaganda
against north Korea".
On
the way down: Posters for the movie were removed across the country in
the wake of threats of real-world attacks from the hackers
'The
U.S. Department of State's special human rights envoy went the lengths
of urging the movie makers to keep all scenes insulting the dignity of
the DPRK supreme leadership in the movie, saying it is needed to "vex
the north Korean government".
'The
facts glaringly show that the U.S. is the chief culprit of terrorism as
it has loudly called for combating terrorism everywhere in the world
but schemed behind the scene to produce and distribute movies inciting
it in various countries of the world.'
Sony
cancelled The Interview's slated December 25 release last week after
the hackers threatened real-world attacks on cinemas screening it.
The vast majority of cinema chains which were set to screen the movie pulled it after the threats.
President
Obama later said Sony had made a mistake in cancelling the movie, and
that he would have intervened to make sure it went ahead.
In an interview with CNN,
he said: 'If we set a precedent in which a dictator in another country
can disrupt, through cyber, you know, a company's distribution chain or
its products and, as a consequence, we start censoring ourselves, that's
a problem.'
However,
he also sought to downplay the overall significance of the spat,
calling it 'cyber vandalism', while North Korea has repeatedly called
the making of the film 'an act of war'.
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