North Korea hit back Tuesday at a recent US decision to retain it on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, accusing Washington of having engaged in terrorist acts under the pretext of "counterterrorism."

Earlier this month, the State Department unveiled its annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2020, which kept the North on the list, along with Iran and Syria.

In a post on its foreign ministry website, Pyongyang criticized Washington for posing as the "judge of terrorism," cataloguing a number of past US-involved wars and lambasting them as "large-scale acts of state terrorism."

"The US is the criminal state of terrorism which did not hesitate to commit acts of terrorism," read the post, claiming that the US carried out terrorist operations targeting political figures and government officials in foreign countries.

It added that Washington's denunciation of others as "terrorist states" is the "worst case of a guilty party filing suit first."

North Korea has been on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism since 2017, when North Korean agents assassinated leader Kim Jong-un's half brother, Kim Jong-nam, using a chemical agent in Malaysia. (Yonhap)