north korea has denied any involvement in that cyberattack. it prompted the studio to stop its release of a satirical film about the assassination of kim jong un. all of north korea s internet traffic goes through china, a key pyongyang ally. cnn s will ripley is following this story from our tokyo bureau, and he joins us now live with the very latest. hello, will. hey, natalie. the reason why the focus is shifting toward china right now is a simple reality that any hacking attack, even if it was orchestrated by north korea, would be very unlikely to originate from within that country because north korea doesn t have the kind of internet infrastructure that other countries around the world have. north korea deliberately doesn t have the internet readily available because they don t want their citizens inside the country to have access outside. in fact, the average adult when i was in pyongyang just a few months ago had never even heard of the internet, had never heard
crippling the attack and calling it groundless slander and times up with the united states for the investigation. president obama is in vacation in hawaii. what was the president up to today? reporter: well, julie, president obama played a round of golf in the first full day of christmas vacation in hawaii. his administration is dealing with theuation of soiber attack by north korea. north korea denied involvement in the attack. but the national council said the fbi made chlor, we are confident that the north korea government is responsible for the destructive attack. president obama said the u.s. will respond to the hacking attack on our time and place and porportional. but one option is putting north korea back on the countries that
serious hacking attack from hackers who the united states government believes to be the government of north korea. the president today says he has sympathy for sony and recognized they are going through a hard time, but he criticized very bluntly their decision to pull the movie. sony is a corporation. it suffered significant damage. there were threats against its employees. i am sympathetic to the concerns that they faced. having said all that, yes, i think they made a mistake. we cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the united states. because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they do when they see a documentary they don t like.
president holding a major year end news conference yesterday. mr. obama slamming sony pictures for pulling a movie from theaters after the company was hit hard by a devastating cyberattack. joining us live now from honolulu with the very latest on the first family s trip to the aloha state. president obama was clearly not happy with sony s decision to pull the release of that movie and yesterday the ceo of the entertainment division of sony shot back. he s been a big political supporter of the president. but yesterday he said on cnn that he defended his actions, that the president was mistaken. last night, the president arrived with his family here in hawaii for their annual vacation. around 11:00 last night. they plan to be here for 17 days. about there will be plenty of work. starting to do with what to do about north korea and its hacking attack of sony. president obama said the u.s. will, quote, respond.
saying he tried to rally the troops and say we can t be giving in, we can t have a foreign country or any type of hacker dictating the content of what we produce. what if they start going after newsrooms and documentary newsmakers? things that are fact, not fiction. where do you draw the line? clooney says he couldn t get anybody on board. isn t that something? we re all vulnerable to this kind of pressure and hacking attack. but the other point here is this, subtle shift now in sony s rhetoric because before it said it had no plans and frankly no interest in putting this movie online, which sony could do tomorrow it has the technological capability to sfreem it or put it out on dvd. now you hear the ceo saying we don t have any partners to do that. we re really interested in doing that because it s suffered a huge blow to its corporate image and has to be seen at least as caring about free speech and free expression. but i don t think that interview is really going to hold up. i thi