North Korea calls Obama ‘monkey’, suffers new Internet outage

Calls over release of comedy film about fictional plot to kill its leader

SEOUL:

North Korea suffered a new Internet outage on Saturday shortly after calling US President Barack Obama a ‘monkey’ over the release of a comedy film about a fictional plot to kill its leader.

The latest shutdown came after the isolated dictatorship’s powerful National Defence Commission (NDC) threatened ‘inescapable deadly blows’ over the film. The cause of the outages of the country’s already limited Internet access has not been confirmed.

“At Pyongyang time 7:30 pm North Korea’s Internet and mobile 3G network came to a standstill, and had not returned to normal as of 9:30 pm,” Xinhua news agency said. Respected cyber security firm Dyn Research said the Internet blackout was ‘country-wide’.

The NDC accused Obama of taking the lead in encouraging cinemas to screen ‘The Interview’ on Christmas Day. Sony had initially cancelled its release after major US cinema chains said they would not show it, following threats by hackers aimed at cinemagoers.



“Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” a spokesman for the NDC’s policy department said in a statement published by the official KCNA news agency.

“If the US persists in American-style arrogant, high-handed and gangster-like arbitrary practices despite (North Korea’s) repeated warnings, the US should bear in mind that its failed political affairs will face inescapable deadly blows,” the spokesman said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2014.