For the second time this year, North Korea has referred to United States President Barack Obama as a monkey, this time as part of its blame of Washington for intermittent Internet problems, including a recent nine hour outage of its system. North Korea says the alleged attack by the U.S. was in retaliation for the communist country’s reported hacking of the Sony Pictures film studio.

In a move criticized by Obama, the Sony Pictures satirical action film The Interview – which portrays an assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – was pulled from distribution after the cyber-attack. Obama made a non-specific pledge to retaliate against North Korea, but not did say how that would happen.

After Sony reversed its decision on Christmas Day, the ruling National Defense Commission (chaired by Kim) put the onus directly on Obama, saying through its official mouthpiece, the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) that, as he has previously, Obama was reckless “like a monkey in a tropical forest.” The term apparently was intended  to cause racial offense.

Earlier this year, a translation of a KCNA quotation of a North Korean iron worker had the man saying that Obama looked to him a monkey that was native to Africa, having similar physical features, like grey eyes, large mouth, and rough ears that are “hairy.”

Obama acts not only like a monkey, the man said, but has a “red bum.” The Chollima Ironworks Factory worker, Kang Hyuk, finally said that he believed Obama would be a perfect inhabitant of a non-specified zoo in Africa, where he could enjoy “breadcrumbs thrown by visitors.”

Distribution of the film was originally cancelled by Sony when a number of large cinema companies declined to show it after threats from hackers. Sony later demurred with a more limited release after Obama said in public that the company had caved to pressure from North Korea, agreeing with critics that putting the film in mothballs threatened freedom of expression.

North Korea said Obama was involved in “blackmailing” U.S. cinema companies to release the film, which is characterized as political satire. It shows Kim Jong-un as an egotistical and foolish tyrant, sometimes threatening and other times crying.

Major North Korean Internet sites experienced intermittent disruptions last week, including a total outage that lasted almost nine hours. Although service was restored on Tuesday, additional reports said that both wired Internet and mobile networks were again disabled Saturday evening.  North Korea blamed the U.S.

Accused by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the cyberattack against Sony Pictures, North Korea has categorically denied this. The country has challenged the FBI to produce evidence.

In a hazy statement seemingly attempting to link the relatively low health of the U.S. population with the incidents, North Korea said the U.S. is “oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses” but prefers, instead, to disrupt “the main media outlets” of another country.

Other reports suggest that North Korea has been involved in cyberattacks against Korea Hydro and Nuclear power in South Korea, saying they are a “smear campaign” by South Korean leaders desiring popularity. The attacks resulted in a leak of internal information from the company. An official in South Korea looking into the matter had not ruled out North Korean involvement.