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North Korea threatens to target White House after claims it was behind Sony hacking North Korea threatens US, claiming White House was involved in film plot
(about 4 hours later)
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 US mainland, that cesspool of terrorism”. North Korea is threatening to retaliate against the US over a Hollywood film portraying the assassination of Kim Jong-un, saying it has “clear evidence” that Washington was heavily involved in devising the plot.
Such rhetoric is routine from North Korea’s massive propaganda machine during times of high tension with Washington. The stern but vague warnings come after Sony Pictures decided last week to cancel the release of The Interview following cyberattacks and threats against the company. North Korea also said the US government was wrong to “recklessly” claim Pyongyang was behind the hacking.
But a long statement from the powerful National Defense Commission late Sunday also underscores Pyongyang’s sensitivity at a movie whose plot focuses on the assassination of its leader Kim Jong-un, who is the beneficiary of a decades-long cult of personality built around his family dynasty. The accusations were issued by the country’s powerful Policy National Defence Commission in a 1,600-word statement run on North Korea’s state news agency, KCNA. Amid the colourful phrasing typical of official North Korean statements – the US was referred to as “the cesspool of terrorism” while the storyline of The Interview was called “vicious and dastardly” – were warnings of unspecified retaliation over the comedy action film, which centres on a plan to kill the supreme leader.
The US blames North Korea for the hacking that escalated to threats of terror attacks against US movie theatres and caused Sony to cancel The Interview’s release. North Korea had “already launched the toughest counteraction” to the film, the statement said, without specifying what this might involve. “Nothing is [a] more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target[s are] all the citadels of the US imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans,” it added.
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 army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to stand in confrontation with the US in all war spaces, including cyber warfare to blow up those citadels,” the statement said, using the formal name for North Korea.
The National Defense Commission, led by Kim, warned that its 1.2 million-member army is ready to use all types of warfare against the US. The Interview, which stars Seth Rogan and James Franco, charts the exploits of two US TV stars who gain an audience with Kim and are then recruited by the CIA to kill the North Korean leader, whose eventual death is shown in a bloody scene. The film sparked fury in the country governed as a dynastic Stalinist dictatorship based around a personality cult focused on Kim and the supreme leaders who preceded him, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung.
“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole US 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. In the latest statement North Korea said it possessed “clear evidence that the US administration was deeply involved in the making of such [a] dishonest reactionary movie”, alleging that the Department of State had urged the filmmakers “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”.
North Korea has said it knows how to prove it had nothing to do with the hacking and proposed a joint investigation with the US. It added: “It is not [an] exaggeration to say, in the light of the prevailing situation, that the US administration and President Obama, looking after the overall state affairs of the US, have been behind the case.”
North Korea and the US, which fought each other in the 1950-53 Korean War, remain technically in a state of war because the conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The US stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea to deter aggression from North Korea. Sony Pictures suddenly cancelled the film’s global release last week – including any DVD or on-demand release – effectively writing off a $44m (£28m) title that was the centrepiece of its Christmas season. The decision was made after Guardians of Peace, the shadowy hacking group who had stolen a huge cache of internal Sony Pictures emails, made unspecified threats about the safety of people who might go to see the film. The move was criticised by a series of Hollywood figures while Barack Obama said on Friday that Sony “made a mistake” in giving in to blackmail.
The rivals are locked in an international standoff over the North’s nuclear and missile programs and its alleged human rights abuses. The FBI has since said the hacking infrastructure used in the attack was similar to other malicious cyber activity previously linked directly to North Korea. However, in its response, North Korea said the claim was “based on obscure sci-tech data and false story”, and that North Korea was not involved in any computer hacking.
In the spring of last year, tension dramatically rose after North Korea issued a string of fiery threats to launch nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul. The country praised the Guardians of Peace, saying it did not know the hackers’ identity but “we can surely say that they are supporters and sympathisers [of] the DPRK”. The statement added that the National Defence Committee “highly estimates the righteous action taken by the Guardians of Peace, though it is not aware of their residence”.
The initial hack saw many thousands of emails stolen from Sony Pictures’ servers and placed on the internet. These included a number of very personal emails, including bickering about a stalled biopic of Apple founder Steve Jobs and gossip about Angelina Jolie, among others. The content was reported by media around the world, including the Guardian, bringing criticism from the likes of Rogen, Brad Pitt and the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.
China, North Korea’s only significant ally, said on Monday it opposed cyberattacks, but stopped short of directly condemning North Korea over the incident. Wang Yi, the country’s foreign minister, had discussed the matter with his US counterpart, John Kerry, the foreign ministry said in a statement. Wang had “reaffirmed China’s relevant position, emphasising China opposes all forms of cyberattacks and cyber terrorism”, it said, but made no mention of North Korea.