N. Korea insults Obama as it blames U.S. for Internet shutdown

North Korean media hurled a racist insult at U.S. President Barack Obama calling him a “monkey,” while mentioning about Sony Pictures movie “Interview” that depicts the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“We have nothing to do with hacking incident to Sony Pictures. Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” North Korea’s National Defense Commission said in the statement by its spokesman on Saturday. “If anyone makes a movie about terror attacks on him (President Obama), can he welcome the movie citing ‘freedom of expression’ as he does now.”

The North’s top governing body described the movie “Interview” as a dishonest and reactionary movie violating the international law, which prohibits infringement on honors of heads of states. “It is an epitome of self-contradictory behavior when the U.S. instigates terror against a specific country,” the commission said.

Pyongyang’s statement also accused the U.S. of being behind the crippling outage of Internet, saying, “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.”

North Korea’s major websites showed disrupted access on Sunday, six days after the Internet outage occurred the nation. Access to the nation’s propaganda websites such as Uriminzokkiri, Ryukyong and Ryomyong, whose servers are based in Chinese cities of Shenyang and Dandong, are still unstable after the sudden Internet shutdown on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the White House and the U.S. Department of State didn’t respond to the blast by Pyongyang. A White House official staying in Hawaii with President Obama for winter vacation said that there was no immediate comment from the government. In May, North Korean media blasted racist insults at the U.S. President calling him “cross-breed with unclear blood,” “clown,” and “monkey.” At that time, the U.S. government strongly criticized the comment, saying, “These comments are particularly ugly and disrespectful.”

Dennis Halpin, former member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and visiting scholar to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said in an email to the Dong-A Ilbo that it was unacceptable for an official media of a nation to use such an offensive language and North Korea cannot be an exception.