North Korea is accusing the United States of being responsible for Internet outages it has experienced in recent days, amid a dispute between the two countries about the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures.

The North’s powerful National Defense Commission, the country’s top governing body, led by Kim Jong Un, released a statement Saturday accusing Washington for causing a complete Internet outage of around nine hours and intermittent outages early in the week.

The outage came after U.S. President Barack Obama said that the U.S. would retaliate for what Washington said is North Korea’s hacking of Sony Pictures.

North Korea denies it was responsible for hacking Sony Pictures’ computer network and posting embarrassing e-mails and other private data.

The North Korean government has an elite team of hackers who have been blamed for a series of attacks in recent years. But since the country is not widely connected to the Internet it is not itself as vulnerable to hacking attempts.
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