North Korea to boost defence capabilities to counter US

North Korea vowed to boost its defence capabilities, including nuclear capabilities Saturday, saying that denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula had "lost its meaning" amid a hostile US policy.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly voted in favour of referring the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in a resolution initiated by the European Union (EU) and Japan.

Pyongyang accused the US of launching a human rights "racket" against it, which it claimed was a "dangerous, politically-motivated attempt to invent an excuse for mounting an invasion on the DPRK", Xinhua reported.

"It is the most vivid manifestation of the US' hostile policy towards the DPRK, aimed at isolating and stifling it at any cost," the DPRK foreign ministry was quoted by the official KCNA news agency as saying in a statement, which was cited by the Xinhua report.

In the statement, Pyongyang completely rejected the human rights resolution passed by the UN General Assembly, which it said failed to reflect the actual human rights situation in the DPRK and thus could never be valid.

It also said that all the agreements signed between Pyongyang and Washington, including the joint statement following the fourth round of the Six-Party Talks signed in 2005 in Beijing, in which both countries agreed to respect each other's sovereignty and exist peacefully together, have become "dead papers".

Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula has lost its meaning as the hostile US policy, aimed to invade the DPRK under the excuse of the human rights issue has grown clear, it noted.

It warned that the army and people of the DPRK would shatter the human rights "racket" launched by hostile forces and firmly defend its socialist system.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had blamed North Korea for a cyber attack on Sony Picture Entertainment, which had planned to release a film about a plot to assassinate the North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un.

Subsequently, Sony scrapped the Christmas release of the film, 'The Interview'.

US President Barack Obama had said that Sony "made a mistake" in halting the release of the film.

"We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the US," Obama said.

North Korea has denied the charge of being behind the attack and demanded that the US should include Pyongyang in a joint investigation into the case.