The latest US extension of sanctions is a hostile act against North Korea and a challenge to a historical summit among two countries in Singapore last year, an official of Pyongyang’s foreign ministry said.

Last week, the White House extended six executive orders, including sanctions imposed over North Korea’s nuclear and missile plans by one year. The anonymous North Korean foreign ministry official denounced US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s remarks that more than 80.0% of the North Korean economy had been disturbed by sanctions.

“This is … a manifestation of the most extreme hostile acts by the United States,” the official said in a statement published by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency.

“All these speak clearly to the fact that the wild dream of the United States to bring us to our knees by means of sanctions and pressure has not changed at all but grows even more undisguised,” he further added.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump held their first significant summit in Singapore in June last year, wherein they decided to make new relations and work toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

But the second summit in Vietnam in February wasn’t successful as both sides failed to arrive at a consensus amidst the US demands for denuclearization and North Korean demands for sanction relief.

The North Korean spokesman cautioned it would be difficult to reach denuclearization as long as policymakers, who have an “inveterate antagonism” toward North Korea, exercise control over US politics.