Pyongyang state media is publishing a warning that the United States and South Korea are continuing joint military exercises.
North Korea has accused the United States and South Korea of escalating tensions “to the brink of nuclear war” through their joint military exercises and promised to respond with “offensive action,” according to state media KCNA.
A commentary published by KCNA on Thursday criticized the ongoing exercises as “a trigger to bring the situation on the Korean peninsula to an explosion.”
Attributed to Choe Ju Hyon, an international security analyst, the article added: “The reckless military confrontation hysteria of the US and its minions against the DPRK is driving the situation in the Korean peninsula to irreversible catastrophe… on the brink of nuclear war. ”
DPRK is the abbreviation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the formal name for North Korea.
“Now the international community unanimously hopes that the dark clouds of nuclear war hanging over the Korean peninsula will be lifted as soon as possible,” it added.
US and South Korean forces have been conducting a series of annual spring exercises since March, including air and sea exercises with a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and B-1B and B-52 bombers, and their first large-scale amphibious landing drills in five years. On Wednesday, B52s were deployed for their first use on the peninsula in a month.
The comment highlighted the involvement of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz as intended to foment the confrontation, and said Pyongyang will respond to the exercises by exercising its war deterrent through “offensive action”.
“The exercises have turned the Korean peninsula into a huge powder magazine that could be detonated at any moment,” it added.
North Korea views such exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.
Pyongyang conducted a record number of weapons tests last year and has ramped up its military activity in recent weeks. It has unveiled new, smaller warheads, fired its longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile — the Hwasong 17 — and tested an underwater nuclear-capable drone under development. It also fired cruise missiles from a submarine.
In a separate KCNA article, Han Tae Song, the permanent representative of North Korea’s diplomatic mission in Geneva, strongly condemned an annual resolution passed this week by the United Nations Human Rights Council on the country’s human rights record.
The resolution, which was adopted without a vote, extended the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in North Korea for one year.
Han called the resolution an “unacceptable act of political provocation and hostility” and “fraud’s most politicized document”.
A groundbreaking 2014 UN report on North Korean human rights concluded that North Korean security chiefs — and possibly leader Kim Jong Un — should face trial for overseeing a state-controlled system of Nazi-like atrocities . The US sanctioned Kim in 2016 for human rights violations.