Comments made by US President Joe Biden and his administration demonstrate a hostile position toward North Korea, and the country will respond in kind, Pyongyang officials said on Sunday.
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The officials' comments were carried on state news agency KCNA, and followed a White House statement that a month-long review of North Korean policy had been completed.
One spokesman for the North Korean foreign ministry accused Washington of insulting the dignity of the country's supreme leadership by criticising North Korea's human rights situation.
America's criticism was a provocation that showed the United States "girding itself up for an all-out showdown" with North Korea, and would be answered accordingly, the unnamed spokesman said.
In a separate statement the North Korean head of the Department of US affairs Kwon Jong Gun cited Biden's first policy speech to Congress on Wednesday, where the new president said nuclear programmes in North Korea and Iran posed threats that would be addressed through "diplomacy and stern deterrence".
Kwon said it is illogical and an encroachment upon North Korea's right to self-defence for the United States to call its defensive deterrence a threat.
Biden's speech was "intolerable" and "a big blunder," Kwon said.
"His statement clearly reflects his intent to keep enforcing the hostile policy toward the DPRK as it had been done by the US for over half a century," he said, using the initials for North Korea's official name.
'Negative responses'
The statements from North Korea appeared to echo comments by the ministry in March, which said relations with the US would be shaped by the "principle of power for power, and goodwill for goodwill," said Jenny Town, director of the US-based 38 North program, which tracks North Korea.
"So for the US to keep emphasising the threat, it keeps focus on the negative aspects of the relationship, and will elicit negative responses," she said.
Town noted that while one statement alluded to the policy review, the North Korean commentary seemed more focused on the Biden administration's talk of threats.
Talks aiming to persuade Pyongyang to surrender its nuclear weapons programme had stalled, when no deal was struck in summits between former US president Donald Trump, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Under Friday's policy review, Biden had settled on a new approach exploring diplomacy to break the stalemate, but not seeking a grand bargain with Kim, the White House said.
Neither the White House or State Department immediately commented on the latest statements from North Korea.
Kwon said the US talk of diplomacy was designed to cover up the country's hostile acts, and the US was using 'deterrence' as a way to pose nuclear threats to North Korea.
With Biden's policy now clear, North Korea "will be compelled to press for corresponding measures, and with time the US will find itself in a very grave situation," he concluded.
In a third statement, Kim Yo Jong, a senior official in the government and sister of leader Kim Jong Un, sharply criticized South Korea for failing to stop defector activists from launching anti-North Korea leaflets.
An activist group in South Korea said on Friday it had released balloons into North Korea carrying dollar bills and leaflets denouncing the government in Pyongyang, defying a recently imposed law banning such releases after complaints by the North.
"We regard the manoeuvres committed by the human wastes in the south as a serious provocation against our state and will look into corresponding action," Kim Yo Jong said.
Last year, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea, after Kim Yo Jong led a campaign of criticism over the leaflet launches.
-Reuters