Ready to respond with nuke weapons `anytime`: North Korea tells US

Pyongyang: North Korea is at it again.

In its latest salvo, Pyongyang has directly referred to US while mentioning “hostile forces”, warning them about its nuke capability in face of any “reckless hostile policy”.

According to North's state-run Korean Central News Agency, a top atomic energy official of North Korea said that the country is improving its nuclear weapons "in quality and quantity."

"If the US and other hostile forces persistently seek their reckless hostile policy towards the DPRK and behave mischievously, the DPRK is fully ready to cope with them with nuclear weapons any time," the CNN quoted the director of the North Korean Atomic Energy Institute said.

In what can be said to be the first official confirmation its nuclear reactor, the atomic energy official said that North's main nuke complex at Yongbyon is operating normally.

If re-started, the reactor has the potential to produce plutonium required to make one bomb per year, experts believe.

Yongbyon's reactor was shut down in 2007 but North Korea pledged to restart it in 2013, when the tension with South Korea ran high after it conducted its third nuclear test.