North Korea reacts belligerently to US strategy document

The country's foreign ministry responded on Saturday, calling it a document full of Donald Trump's criminal nature

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un addresses a council of the Workers' Party of Korea. KCNA/Reuters

North Korea responded on Friday to the US security strategy report, threatening that the renegade state would make president Donald Trump regret his belligerent policy toward Pyongyang.

Mr Donald Trump pledged on Monday his readiness to respond with "overwhelming force" to North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

North Korea's foreign ministry responded on Saturday, calling it a document full of Trump's criminal nature.

"The report openly reveals Washington's aspirations to attack us," a ministry spokesman told the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"As the US set its diplomatic and security policy at crushing us militarily and is publicly aiming a sword at us, we will make the US bitterly regret its strategy with our cannons."

There has been a high alert since the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September and fired intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) three times this year.

America maintains that all options, including military action, are on the table, though it prefers diplomacy to resolve North Korea's nuclear standoff.

North Korea says Washington has abandoned all agreements with it as something worthless so far on the premise that North Korea will eventually collapse.

"The international community should be aware of Trump's scheme to set off a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. And it should also see his real intentions behind Washington's dialogue offer as aiming to mask the US' evil intentions and how it ridicules the world."