North Korea has suffered another Internet shutdown which lasted at least two hours --- the second outage, so far, that hit the country's network connection since last week.

Cyber experts and China state-run news agency Xinhua said that the shutdown was in retaliation against Pyongyang by the United States after allegedly hacking Sony Pictures. North Korea blamed Washington for the online blackout earlier this week that had  Pyongyang's internet and mobile 3G-come to a standstill.

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Xinhua said North Korea's internet and mobile 3G network stopped at 7:30am local time on Saturday in Pyongyang and had not returned to normal as of 9:30 am. Cyber experts said North Korea suffered a "country-wide Internet blackout" last Saturday.

The online shutdown came on the heels of an earlier statement made by North Korea President Kim Jong Un which called United States President Barack Obama a "monkey" for encouraging cinema houses to screen the controversial movie "The Interview'," a comedy featuring the assassination of North Korean leader.

North Korea, through its National Defense Commission, threatened the US of "inescapable deadly blows" over the showing of the film and has accused the US of disrupting the Internet operations of Pyongyang media agencies.

"The United States, with its large physical size and oblivious to the shame of playing hide and seek as children with runny noses would, has begun disrupting the internet operations of the main media outlets of our republic," North Korea said in a statement.

Two of North Korea's main media outlets to the world, the state-run news agency and Rodong Simmun, were among those whose internet connection went dead for a long period of time.

Although the United States blames North Korea for the Sony Pictures hacking, political observers said Russia may have been the main culprit.

TagsInternet outage, North Korea, Internet shutdown, U.S., Sony Hack, The Interview