North Korea calls Seoul's hacking allegations 'sound of eating corpses from crow's mouth'

North Korea has denied it has carried out the recent cyberattacks on South Korea. A state newspaper described the accusations as political propaganda engineered by Seoul, and issued fresh threats of retaliation against its US-backed neighbour.

Within days after South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), accused Pyongyang's hackers of attempting to scrape sensitive data from officials' smartphones, an editorial in Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of Korea's Communist Party, hit back.

"The South is claiming the North's cyberattack and using it for its own political purpose. There is nothing to expect but the sound of eating corpses from a crow's mouth. However, we cannot just overlook the South's abrupt, provocative, and heinous accusations against its neighbour," read the piece.

In the inimitable scorn-filled style of North Korea's press releases, the stinging editorial said any attempts from the outside world to tarnish the image of North Korea would be "mercilessly crushed".

"This is such shameless bulls**t from the enemy forces who are obsessed with confrontation and political slander," the article read, adding that that accusation is being used to promote Seoul's new anti-terrorism laws. North Korea was referring to a controversial bill, currently before the South Korean assembly, which critics fear could be used to settle scores with the government's political opponents.

The bellicose statements from the rogue state come amid increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula. In addition to South Korea and the US holding their annual joint wargames, one of North Korea's submarine is believed to have gone missing.