North Korea said “wait and see” on Monday when asked if Pyongyang was involved in a cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment a month before its planned release of a movie about a plot to kill the reclusive state's leader, Kim Jong Un.
“The hostile forces are relating everything to the DPRK [North Korea]. I kindly advise you to just wait and see,” a spokesman for North Korea's U.N. mission said when asked about the attack that knocked out the studio's computer network.
North Korea routinely refers to the United States and South Korea as hostile forces.
Asked if North Korea was not involved in the attack on Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, the spokesman for the U.N. mission said in an email: “I do not know anything about this.”
Sony Pictures' computer system went down last Monday. Before screens went dark, they displayed a red skull and the phrase “Hacked By #GOP,” which reportedly stands for Guardians of Peace, the Los Angeles Times reported. The hackers also warned they would release “secrets” stolen from Sony, the Times reported.
Technology news site Re/code reported that Sony and security consultants were investigating whether someone acting on behalf of North Korea, possibly from China, was responsible.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday that Sony Pictures was investigating every possibility, adding that no link to North Korea has been uncovered.
North Korea complained to the United Nations in June about the film starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, accusing the United States of sponsoring terrorism and committing an act of war by allowing production of the movie.
“I personally don't care if [the movie's] disrespectful to Kim, because he's evil. But that's not the intent,” Rogen posted on Twitter on Sunday. “North Korea has produced tons of propaganda films that portray America's destruction.”
