Obama should hit Pyongyang harder: lawmakers

The United States should hit North Korea harder to make the communist regime realize it will face a "real consequence" if it engages in acts like the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, a ranking U.S. senator said Sunday.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the previous Congress, was critical of the latest U.S. sanctions the administration of President Barack Obama announced Friday to punish Pyongyang for the Sony hack.

"I think there has to be a real consequence to this," he said on CNN. "Otherwise, you will see it happen again and again."

The senator also was critical of Obama calling the Sony hack "cybervandalism."

"Vandalism is when you break a window. Terrorism is when you destroy a building. And what happened here is that North Korea landed a virtual bomb on Sony's parking lot, and ultimately had real consequences to it as a company and to many individuals who work there," he said.

Menendez also said the North should be re-listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.

On Friday, the Obama administration announced retaliatory sanctions on the North in response to the Sony hack, blacklisting three North Korean entities and 10 officials, including the Reconnaissance General Bureau, Pyongyang's primary intelligence organization.

The blacklisting, which bans those sanctioned from using the U.S. financial system, were seen as largely symbolic because the North has already been under a string of international sanctions and those newly sanctioned are not believed to have any dealings with the U.S.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also questioned the effectiveness of the latest sanctions. He also vowed to introduce legislation that calls for much tougher sanctions on Pyongyang.

"Many of the North Koreans blacklisted today have already been targeted by U.S. sanctions. We need to go further to sanction those financial institutions in Asia and beyond that are supporting the brutal and dangerous North Korean regime, as was done in 2005," Royce said in a statement.

He was referring to the U.S. blacklisting of a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau that not only froze North Korean money held in Banco Delta Asia (BDA) but also scared away other financial institutions from dealing with Pyongyang for fear they would also be blacklisted.

The measure is considered the most effective U.S. sanction yet on the North.

Last year, Royce initiated the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act that calls for strengthening financial sanctions against Pyongyang, but the legislation was scrapped as it did not pass through the Senate before the 113th Congress ended last week.

Royce has vowed to reintroduce a similar bill in the new Congress.

North Korea, which denies responsibility for the Sony hack, has denounced the latest U.S. sanctions as evidence of U.S. "hostility" toward the North and vowed to further strengthen its pursuit of its "songun," military-first, policy. (Yonhap)

U.S. reaction to the North's foreign ministry statement was not immediately available.