North Korea calls Sony hack claims ‘slander,’ threatens to retaliate

Leaders in North Korea on Saturday called the Obama Administration’s accusations that it was behind the cyber attack on Sony Pictures “groundless slander” and threatened to retaliate unless the United States agreed to conduct a joint investigation with them.

The comments were included in a statement broadcasted on the official state-controlled KCNA news agency, Reuters reported, and read by an unnamed spokesman for the country’s foreign ministry who maintained the country was not behind the attacks.

“We propose to conduct a joint investigation with the U.S. in response to groundless slander being perpetrated by the U.S. by mobilizing public opinion,” the North Korean spokesman said. “If the U.S. refuses to accept our proposal for a joint investigation and continues to talk about some kind of response by dragging us into the case, it must remember there will be grave consequences,” the spokesman said.

Neither the White House nor the State Department had commented on North Korea’s response by Saturday afternoon.

On Friday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. will respond “in a place and manner and time that we choose” to the hack attack the FBI blamed on North Korea and said it was similar to others carried out by the country.

He also said that Sony Pictures Entertainment “made a mistake” in its decision to shelve a film about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader, the Associated Press reported.

“I wish they had spoken to me first,” Obama said of Sony executives at a year-end news conference Friday. “We cannot have a society in which some dictatorship someplace can start imposing censorship.”