Pyongyang has slammed Washington’s recent statement calling on the North to drop its weapons program, just a few hours after the country conducted its fifth nuclear test.

The statement read that Pyongyang would “break the chains of sanctions, pressure, and blockade”.

“According to the recent report, the While House’ Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications babbled that the U.S. is ‘very vigilant in sanctions enforcement,’,” a spokesman for the Institute for American Studies of the DPRK Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

“…and also said that we (North Korea) could ‘abandon its ballistic missile program and nuclear