North Korea on Monday denounced the U.S.-South Korea joint military drills as "severe provocation," and vowed to bolster its nuclear deterrence for self-defense.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman issued a statement slamming the largest-ever U.S.-South Korea joint drill on Friday south of the demilitarized zone on Friday, during which shots were allegedly fired at the North Korean flag.
"It is an extremely grave military action and politically-motivated provocation to fire live bullets and shells at the flag of a sovereign state without a declaration of war," the statement carried by the official KCNA news agency said.
The drill once again proved that the commitment which the U.S. made in the February North Korea-U.S. Agreement that they would not antagonize the Communist State was a sheer lie, and the recent hostile policy toward Pyongyang had gone beyond the tolerable limit, the statement said.
The spokesman warned that North Korea would further bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defense as long as the U.S. persisted in its hostile policy toward it.
South Korea and the United States on Friday staged their largest ever live-fire drill aimed at checking solid military preparedness and war-fighting capabilities, according to the South Koreas Defense Ministry.
A spokesman for the National Peace Committee of Korea denounced the joint military exercises as an intentional act to provoke war, which has pushed the Korean Peninsula and the rest of Northeast Asia to the edge of an armed conflict.
U.S. President Barack Obama last Monday decided to extend for another year the sanctions against North Korea citing the "unusual and extraordinary threat" posed by the Asian country to U.S. national security, foreign policy and economy, reports said.
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