North Korean on Saturday slammed the U.S. for a recent decision to suspend its food aid plan in retaliation for the North's planned rocket launch.

Answering a question raised by KCNA, a spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. "overreaction" to Pyongyang's plan to launch scientific and technological satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 for "peaceful" purposes has gone beyond the limit.

"The U.S. has so far insisted that it does not relate humanitarian issue with the political issue. But it responded to the DPRK's (North Korea's) planned satellite launch with the announcement to stop following through on its commitment to food aid," said the unnamed spokesman.

"This would be a regrettable act of scrapping the DPRK-U.S. agreement in its entirety as it is a violation of the core articles of the February 29 DPRK-U.S. agreement."

The spokesman went on to say that Pyongyang extended invitation to satellite experts to visit the launching station to show its sincerity as regards the satellite launch in a transparent manner, but the U.S. clarified that it would not send its experts and also forced other countries not to send one.

The North has claimed that the launch set for between April 12 and 16 is designed to put an earth observation satellite into orbit. South Korea, the United States and other regional powers suspect the rocket launch could be a disguised test of the North's ballistic missile technology, which is banned under a 2009 U.N. resolution.

In Washington, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday that the Obama administration will overhaul its approach toward North Korea if it presses ahead with the rocket launch. (Yonhap)