North Korea has broken its silence to slam US President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, saying its nuclear capabilities would “deter Trump and his lackeys from showing off on the Korean peninsula”.

In his speech last week, Mr Trump said that “no regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea.

“We need only look at the depraved character of the North Korean regime to understand the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose to America and to our allies,” the President said.

On Sunday, a North Korean foreign ministry official shot back.

“If Trump does not get rid of his anachronistic and dogmatic way of thinking, it will only bring about the consequence of further endangering the security and future of the United States,” the official said, in comments carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The official disputed Mr Trump’s claim in his address that the US had “made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success” over the past year, calling it “the height of Trump-style arrogance, arbitrariness and self-conceit”.

Mr Trump also said in his speech that the US was “waging a campaign of maximum pressure” to prevent North Korea from being able to attack the US with nuclear weapons.

The foreign ministry official said North Korea’s “self-reliant defence capability with the nuclear force as its backbone will, however, completely deter Trump and his lackeys from showing off on the Korean peninsula”.

On Friday, Mr Trump sought to increase pressure on Pyongyang over its nuclear program by consulting with allies and highlighting the human rights abuses suffered by defectors from North Korea.

Mr Trump hosted about a half-dozen North Korean defectors in the Oval Office, including Ji Seong-ho, who had used crutches to escape the reclusive country after a train ran over his limbs. Days earlier, Ji raised his crutches in triumph when Trump singled him out during his State of the Union address.

– With AAP