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 North Korea's main internet sites experienced intermittent
disruptions early in the week for reasons that U.S. tech companies
said could range from technological glitches to a hacking attack.
"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to
the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses
would, has begun disrupting the Internet operations of the main
media outlets of our republic," the North's National Defense
Commission said in a statement.
"It is truly laughable," a spokesman for the commission said in
comments carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.
The spokesman again rejected an accusation by the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation that North Korea was behind the cyberattack
on Sony Pictures and demanded the United States produce the evidence
for its accusation.
 North Korea's Internet problems began last weekend and it suffered a
complete outage of nearly nine hours before links were largely
restored on Tuesday.
U.S. officials said Washington was not involved.
Following the attack on Sony, it canceled the release of a comedy
called "The Interview" about the fictional assassination of North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
After criticism from President Barack Obama that it was caving into
North Korean pressure, Sony put the film out on limited release.
It took in more than $1 million on Christmas Day in 331 mostly
independent theaters after large cinema chains refused to screen it
following threats of violence from hackers.
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In a separate commentary, the North denied any role in cyberattacks
on South Korea's nuclear power plant operator, calling the
suggestion that it had done so part of a "smear campaign" by
unpopular South Korean leaders.
A South Korean official investigating the attacks this week that led
to leaks of internal data from Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power said
authorities were not ruling out North Korea's involvement.
"The South Korean puppet authorities are working hard to link this
case with (us) though the truth about it has not been probed," Minju
Joson, the official publication of the North's cabinet, said in a
commentary carried by KCNA.
"This is the same conspiratorial farce as the Cheonan warship
sinking case," it said, referring to the sinking of a South Korean
ship with the loss of 46 sailors in 2010 that South Korea blamed on
the North.
(Editing by Robert Birsel)
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