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North Korea threatens strikes against White House and ‘U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism’
Associated Press and Bloomberg News | December 21, 2014 | Last Updated: Dec 22 12:57 AM ET
SEOUL, KOREA — President Barack Obama is “recklessly” spreading rumours of a Pyongyang-orchestrated cyberattack of Sony Pictures, North Korea says, as it warns of strikes against the White House, Pentagon and “the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism.”
Hackers including the “‘Guardians of Peace” group that forced Sony to pull a comedy about the assassination of Kim Jong-un ‘‘are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in all other parts of the world,’’ the Kim-led National Defense Commission said in a statement published yesterday by the official Korean Central News Agency. Even so, North Korea doesn’t know who the Guardians are, the commission said.
Such rhetoric is routine from North Korea’s massive propaganda machine during times of high tension with Washington. But a long statement from the powerful National Defence Commission late Sunday also underscores Pyongyang’s sensitivity at a movie whose plot focuses on the assassination of its leader, who is the beneficiary of a decades-long cult of personality built around his family dynasty.
The U.S. blames North Korea for the cyberattack that escalated to threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theatres and caused Sony to cancel The Interview’s release.
Obama, who promised to respond “proportionately” to the attack, told CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview broadcast Sunday that Washington is reviewing whether to put North Korea back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The North came off the list in 2008 after being on it for 20 years.
The National Defence Commission, led by Kim, warned that its 1.2 million-member army is ready to use all types of warfare against the U.S.
“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism, by far surpassing the ’symmetric counteraction’ declared by Obama,” said the commission’s Policy Department in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea is ready to confront the U.S. in all areas including cyber-warfare, and has already entered “an unprecedented state of ultra-harsh counter-warfare,” the NDC said without elaborating on what that means. “The just struggle to be waged by them across the world will bring achievements thousands of times greater than the hacking attack.”
