North Korea slams Obama over The Interview release

North Korea has hit out at United States President Barack Obama, following the release of the controversial film The Interview.

The Asian country's National Defence Commission (NDC) also accused the US of shutting down the country's Internet and described Obama as “reckless” and as a “monkey”.

An NDC spokesman denounced the US on Saturday for screening the "dishonest and reactionary movie hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of North Korea and agitating terrorism".

"Obama is the chief culprit who forced the Sony Pictures Entertainment to indiscriminately distribute the movie,” the NDC said. "Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest."

They want on to accuse Washington of "groundlessly linking the unheard of hacking at the Sony Pictures Entertainment to the DPRK".

Sony Pictures had originally pulled the film’s release after suffering an unprecedented hacking attack at the hands of a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace. The hackers also threatened to carry out a terrorist attack on cinemas showed the film on its scheduled release date of Christmas Day.

However, the company later reconsidered and released the comedy on Christmas Day. It was shown online and in several hundred independent US cinemas, but larger cinemas still decided not to screen it.

Obama had joined a number of critics in warning that the shelving of the movie threatened freedom of expression.

The FBI had directly blamed North Korea for the hack. North Korea denied these assertions but praised the hack as a "righteous deed".

The Interview stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as two journalists enlisted by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong Un.