North Korea slams Obama's 'childish' Hiroshima visit

Nuclear-armed North Korea has ridiculed US President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima as the "childish" diplomatic ploy of a "nuclear war fanatic."

In a commentary released late on Thursday, the North's official KCNA news agency said Obama's decision to become the first sitting US president to visit the site of the 1945 atomic bomb strike was an act of stunning hypocrisy.

Heavily sanctioned for its four nuclear tests, Pyongyang insists its entire weapons program is an unavoidable response to decades of US nuclear hostility.

Obama was due to lay a wreath in Hiroshima later Friday at a memorial to the bombing which ultimately claimed the lives of around 140 000 people.