N. Korea condemns US vice president's remarks on Kim Jong-un's sister

Pyongyang, Feb 26 : North Korea has slammed US Vice President Mike Pence for labelling North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister -- Kim Yo Jong -- as "the centre of a vicious regime".

Kim Yo Jong attended the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea on February 9.

A spokesman of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said in a statement that Pence's speech was a "disgraceful behaviour" and "an act of rogue without an equal in the world", Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

Pence, who also attended the opening ceremony of the games, reportedly said at a conservative group meeting in Maryland state in the US on February 23 that Kim Yo Jong, who is officially a first vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), is "the centre of a vicious regime" and "a central pillar of the most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet".

"Unpardonable... that Pence dared to defame the inviolable North Korean government, terming it 'dictatorial regime,' and absurdly slandered our congratulatory missions including the first vice department director of the WPK Central Committee," the spokesman said in the statement, read out by a stern-faced male broadcaster at the Korean Central Television.

He said North Korea's army and people are "sharing their destinies with their leader and their social system to find out and punish without mercy those insulting the dignity of the supreme leadership and the social system of North Korea no matter whoever and wherever they are."