South North Korea on Sunday crash the latest United Nation sanctions imposed on it over the isolated country's widely-condemned intercontinental ballistic missile tests, describing the move as an "act of war".

"We fully refuse the latest United Nation sanctions... as a violent breach of our republic's sovereignty and an act of war that destroys the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and a wider region," Pyongyang's foreign ministry aforesaid in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.

Under the terms of the sanctions, deliveries of petrol products will be capped at 500,000 barrels a year, and crude oil at four million barrels a year.  That means that the total imports allowed has been cut by 89 per cent since the summer.

It was the first authoritative response from Pyongyang, a day after the United Nation Security Council collectively passed new, US-drafted sanctions that will restrict oil supplying vital for the impoverished state.

The sanctions received the backing of Pyongyang's key ally China and also orders the repatriation of North Korean workers sent abroad to earn much-needed revenue for Kim Jong-un's regime.The test of Hwasong-15 further heightened global concerns over the rapid advance in the North's missile and nuclear weapon programmes that has accelerated since Kim took power in 2011.The North says its weapons programmes are designed for self-defence against "hostile" US policies towards the isolated but nuclear-armed nation.