North Korea has threatened to sink Japan and reduce the US to 'ashes'

North Korea has threatened to "sink" Japan and reduce the United States to "ashes and darkness" with nuclear weapons for supporting a UN Security Council resolution and sanctions over its latest nuclear test said a North Korean state agency.

Pyongyang's Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, which handles the North's external ties and propaganda, also called for the breakup of the Security Council, which it called "a tool of evil" made up of "money-bribed" countries that move at the order of the United States, report Reuters.

The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche. Japan is no longer needed to exist near us, the committee said in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.

Juche is the North's ruling ideology that mixes Marxism and an extreme form of go-it-alone nationalism preached by state founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong Un.

Regional tensions have risen remarkably since the reclusive state conducted its sixth, and by far its most powerful, nuclear test on September 3.

On Monday, the 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on a US-drafted resolution and a new round of sanctions in response, banning North Korea's textile exports that are the second largest only to coal and mineral, and capping fuel supplies.

The North reacted to the latest action by the Security Council, which had the backing of veto-holding China and Russia, by threatening to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Let's reduce the US mainland into ashes and darkness. Let's vent our spite with mobilisation of all retaliation means which have been prepared till now, the statement said.

The country also accused Japan for "dancing to the tune" of the United States, saying it should never be pardoned for not offering a sincere apology for its "never-to-be-condoned crimes against our people", an apparent reference to Japan's wartime aggression.

It also referred to South Korea as "traitors and dogs" of the United States.