North Korea’s Internet, Mobile Networks Go Down Again

Latest outage arrives after the East Asian country accused US of previous internet failure and referred to President Obama as a “monkey”

Kim Jong-un, Barack Obama, Sony Pictures Entertain (Courtesy of Linda Ge)

North Korea is suffering another outage of its internet and mobile networks, according to China’s Xinhua news agency on Saturday, according to media reports.

This is the latest outage since its networks went down on Monday. The outage also follows statements on Friday from North Korea’s National Defense Commission, which blamed the United States for the previous outage.

“The U.S., a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing a tag,” said an unidentified spokesman from the Commission, which is led by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, on the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The statement accused the U.S. of a hostile North Korean policy, and threatened unspecified consequences. It also referred to President Barack Obama as a monkey after the U.S. placed blame for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment and its movie, “The Interview” on North Korea last week.

“Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,” said the statement. “The Interview” was described as illegal, dishonest and reactionary in the statements.

A large amount of employee records, damning email exchanges between Sony executives and talent, as well as the release of several upcoming movies were leaked in the cyberattack, which all culminated with a threat of a 9/11-type attack on theaters showing “The Interview.”

After initially deciding to pull the Seth Rogen, James Franco comedy from theatrical release, Sony released the film on streaming video on Christmas Eve and as scheduled to select theaters on Christmas Day.

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