N Korea slams US invite of late prisoners father to Olympics

North Korea has slammed the US for bringing the father of late former prisoner Otto Warmbier to the Winter Olympics in the South, accusing it of waging a "defamation campaign" against Pyongyang.

Warmbier, a US college student, was arrested for stealing propaganda material during a 2016 trip to Pyongyang and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for "hostile acts" against the hermit state.

He was held for more than a year before being released in a comatose state, but died shortly after arriving in the US. US Vice President Mike Pence, who led the American delegation to the Games, travelled with Fred Warmbier to the South to "remind the world of the atrocities happening in North Korea".

"The United States is again kicking up a defamation campaign against the DPRK, intentionally attributing Warmbiers death to the latter," state-run news agency KCNA said late Thursday, using the initials of the Norths official name, reports AFP.

Quoting the press director of the Institute for American Studies at Pyongyangs foreign ministry, it accused Washington of highlighting Warmbiers death to step up pressure on the nucleararmed North. "It is a manifestation of crafty intention aimed at... stirring up an international pressure and vindicating its attempt to stifle us by force, as Trump... is terrified at the strength of the DPRK that has made a dignified rise to the status of strategic state," it said.