N Korea calls Sony, Wannacry hack charges smear campaign

North Korea strongly denied claims by the United States that a computer programmer working for the North Korean government was involved in the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the spread of the WannaCry ransomware virus.

In a statement Friday, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official said that the person named by US is a "non-entity," and warned that the allegations, which he called a smear campaign, could harm talks between the two countries following the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

US federal prosecutors allege the programmer, identified as Park Jin Hyok, conspired to conduct a series of attacks that also stole USD 81 million from a bank in Bangladesh.

The US believes he was working for a North Korean-sponsored hacking organisation.

"The act of cybercrimes mentioned by the Justice Department has nothing to do with us," Han Yong Song, a researcher at the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Institute for American Studies, said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

"The US should seriously ponder over the negative consequences of circulating falsehoods and inciting antagonism against the DPRK that may affect the implementation of the joint statement adopted at the DPRK-US summit," he said.

DPRK is short for North Korea's official name the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In the statement, the North flatly denied it had anything to do with the 2104 Sony incident and WannaCry virus, calling the US charges a "vicious slander and another smear campaign."