North Korea has denounced US President Donald Trump’s decision to relist it as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling the move a ‘serious provocation and violent infringement’.

Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism on Monday, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tension over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

In North Korea’s first reaction to the designation, a spokesman for the foreign ministry denied in an interview with the state media outlet KCNA, that his government engaged in any terrorism.

He called the state sponsor of terrorism label ‘just a tool for American-style authoritarianism that can be attached or removed at any time in accordance with its interests’.