North Korea is denying reports that portraits of leader Kim Jong Il have been removed from public places, calling the accounts a U.S. plot to overthrow its government, China's main state news agency reported Friday.
"It didn't happen before, and will never happen," the Xinhua News Agency quoted Ri Gyong Son, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official, as saying in the North's capital, Pyongyang. Xinhua didn't say when he made the remark.
Ri called the reports "an intrigue that the United States and its attaching countries want to overthrow" North Korea's government, Xinhua reported.
Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported this week, citing unidentified diplomats, that portraits of Kim were being removed from buildings in the secretive North.
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