N Korea blames US for Internet blackout

FE Team | Published: December 28, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

SEOUL, Dec 27 (agencies): North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of being responsible for Internet outages it experienced in recent days amid a confrontation between them over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures.
North Korea's main internet sites experienced intermittent disruptions early in the week for reasons that U.S. tech companies said could range from technological glitches to a hacking attack.
North Korea on Saturday called US President Barack Obama a "monkey" for inciting cinemas to screen a comedy featuring a fictional plot to kill its leader, and blamed Washington for an Internet blackout this week.
The isolated dictatorship's powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) threatened "inescapable deadly blows" over the film and accused the US of "disturbing the Internet operation" of North Korean media outlets.
The Internet outage triggered speculation that US authorities may have launched a cyber-attack in retaliation for the hacking of Sony Pictures-the studio behind madcap North Korea comedy "The Interview". Washington has said the attack on Sony was carried out by Pyongyang.
"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the Internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," the North's National Defense Commission said in a statement.
"It is truly laughable," a spokesman for the commission said in comments carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.
The spokesman again rejected an accusation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that North Korea was behind the cyberattack on Sony Pictures and demanded the United States produce the evidence for its accusation.
North Korea's Internet problems began last weekend and it suffered a complete outage of nearly nine hours before links were largely restored on Tuesday.
U.S. officials said Washington was not involved.
Following the attack on Sony, it canceled the release of a comedy called "The Interview" about the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
After criticism from President Barack Obama that it was caving into North Korean pressure, Sony put the film out on limited release.
It took in more than $1 million on Christmas Day in 331 mostly independent theaters after large cinema chains refused to screen it following threats of violence from hackers.
In a separate commentary, the North denied any role in cyberattacks on South Korea's nuclear power plant operator, calling the suggestion that it had done so part of a "smear campaign" by unpopular South Korean leaders.