North Korea suffered Internet and 3G mobile network outage for a second time on Saturday evening amid the hacking row involving Sony Pictures' "The Interview."
Xinhua news agency reports that the Internet and 3G mobile network of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was paralysed around 7.30 pm Pyongyang time (1030 GMT) and had not been restored till 9.30 pm (1230 GMT).
The Internet was "very unstable" throughout the day and by evening, it had come to a "standstill."
Cyber security firm Dyn Research posted on Twitter that North Korea suffered a "country-wide internet blackout" on Saturday.
The second outage comes a day after the country blamed the United States over its earlier Internet outage; North Korea also compared US President Barack Obama to a "monkey."
The country's National Defence Commission headed by the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un accused Obama of releasing the controversial comedy "The Interview."
The movie centres around the assassination plot of Kim Jong-un and North Korea has repeatedly said that it feels offended by the movie. While denying any role in the hacking of Sony Pictures, North Korean authorities have expressed anger over the movie's plot.
Sony had initially called off the Christmas Day release after various theatres said they would not show it. However, after getting the ago ahead from the US President and under pressure from fans, "The Interview" was released in many theatres across the US and also on the digital space.
Needless to say, the release irked North Korea; the Defence Commission said that the movie was illegal, dishonest and reactionary.
"Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest," an unidentified spokesman at the commission's policy department said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency, The Kansas City Star reports.
The White House declined to comment on the issue.
This is not the first time that North Korean has hurled insults at the US President or other top US and South Korean officials. Earlier in 2014, North Korea called US Secretary of State John Kerry a "wolf" and a "hideous" lantern jaw, while terming South Korea's President Park Geun-hye a "prostitute."
North Korea has called President Obama a "monkey" earlier also. In May, North's official news agency published a post in which it was written that the US President has the "shape of a monkey," The Associated Press reports.
Further, the country blamed the United States for its Internet outages in the past week.
The spokesperson for North Korea's commission said, "The US, a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing tag."
