Recent comments from U.S. President Joe Biden and members of his administration show he is intent on maintaining a hostile policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that will require a corresponding response from Pyongyang, DPRK officials said on Sunday.

The officials' comments came in a series of statements carried on state news agency KCNA after the White House on Friday said U.S. officials had completed a months-long review of its DPRK policy.

In one statement, a DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesman said Washington has insulted the dignity of the country's supreme leadership by criticizing the DPRK's human rights situation.

The human rights criticism is a provocation that shows the U.S. is "girding itself up for an all-out showdown" with the DPRK, and it will be answered accordingly, the unnamed spokesman said.

In a separate statement, Kwon Jong Gun, director general of the Department of U.S. Affairs of the DPRK's Foreign Ministry, cited Biden's first policy speech to Congress on Wednesday, where the new president said nuclear programs in the DPRK and Iran posed threats that would be addressed through "diplomacy and stern deterrence."

Kwon said it is illogical and an encroachment upon the DPRK's right to self-defense for the U.S. to call its defensive deterrence a threat.

Biden's speech was "intolerable" and "a big blunder," Kwon said.

"His statement clearly reflects his intent to keep enforcing the hostile policy toward the DPRK as it had been done by the U.S. for over half a century," he said. 

Under the policy announced on Friday, Biden has settled on a new approach to pressuring the DPRK to give up nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that will explore diplomacy but not seek a grand bargain with DPRK leader Kim Jong Un, the White House said.

The White House and the State Department did not immediately comment on the latest DPRK statements.

In Sunday's statement, Kwon said U.S. talk of diplomacy is aimed at covering up its hostile acts, and its deterrence is just a means for posing nuclear threats to the DPRK.

Now that Biden's policy has become clear, the DPRK "will be compelled to press for corresponding measures, and with time, the U.S. will find itself in a very grave situation," he said.

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(With input from Reuters)

(Cover: U.S. and DPRK national flags displayed on billboard in Hanoi, Vietnam, February 25, 2019. /VCG)