North Korea vowed Tuesday to strike the U.S. with a "powerful nuclear hammer" after CIA chief Mike Pompeo hinted last week that Washington was open to the possibility of regime change.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), quoting a Foreign Ministry spokesman, issued a scathing rebuke of Pompeo's remarks at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last Thursday that appeared to advocate ousting the North's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.

"Although his reckless remarks are just balderdash of a guy who has become so angrily desperate due to the ever-increasing nuclear strike capability of the DPRK, they have gone over the line, and it has now become clear that the ultimate aim of the Trump administration's hostile policy towards the DPRK is ... 'regime change,' " the spokesman said.