North Korea on Sunday threatened the White House and other targets in the United States, CNN reports.
The country accused the U.S. government of being behind the making of the movie "The Interview", a comedy in which a pair of hapless television journalists is recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Sony Pictures last week cancelled the release of the film following a hacking attack and threats against theaters that played the film.
In a dispatch on state media, the totalitarian regime warned the United States that "citadels" in the country will be attacked, dwarfing the hacking attack on Sony that led to the cancellation of the film's release.
While steadfastly denying involvement in the hack, for which the FBI blamed on Pyongyang on Friday, North Korea accused President Barack Obama of calling for "symmetric counteraction."
"The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans," a report on state-run KCNA read.
"Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism," the report said, adding that "fighters for justice" including the "Guardians of Peace" -- a group that claimed responsibility for the Sony attack -- "are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in all other parts of the world."
In an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN, Obama called the attack on Sony "an act of cybervandalism," not war.
While the film was the work of private individuals, North Korea insisted otherwise in its statement. "The DPRK has clear evidence that the U.S. administration was deeply involved in the making of such dishonest reactionary movie," it said.