North Korea vows tougher retaliation against US 'hostility'

SEOUL: The powerful sister of North Korea's leader is warning the United States that her country will mount a stronger response to Washington's "invariable hostile policy" toward Pyongyang, the state news agency KCNA reported Wednesday.

"In the present reality when new records are being set in the implementation of the US hostile policy toward the DPRK, it is natural that new records should be created in our reflective counteraction," Kim Yo Jong was quoted as saying by KCNA, using the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The statement comes soon after Pyongyang blasted the FBI's allegations it was behind the theft of US$6 billion from cryptocurrency platform Binance, as it test-fired strategic cruise missiles in a new display of its weapons capabilities.

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of supreme leader Kim Jong Un, again slammed Washington over the Binance allegations.

"We do not regard the 'Binance' hacking incident as any accidental and sudden case or isolated private scheme, but as an extension of Washington's invariable hostile policy toward the DPRK," she was quoted as saying.

"Clearly, the US malicious attempt to get a political and strategic profit by abusing the case is producing a political side effect."

On Saturday, the FBI said a North Korea-affiliated hacking group called TraderTraitor had been behind the hack, but in a statement released Tuesday Kim Yo Jong dismissed that as a "grave political provocation."

On Monday, North Korea test-fired strategic cruise missiles fitted with a new cluster-munition warhead, according to KCNA.

The nuclear-armed North recently tested a range of weaponry including attack drones, a new precision-guided torpedo system and an intermediate-range hypersonic missile.

In her fresh statement released Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong signalled that Pyongyang saw little point in resuming diplomacy.

"It is our clear stand that we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons who refuse to abandon their policy of confrontation while talking about dialogue," she was quoted as saying.

She added: "The choice for peace includes dialogue of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us."--AFP