Arab News Japan

TOKYO: North Korea says military exercises by South Korea and the United States “are pushing the region’s safe environment into a catastrophic situation that cannot be reversed.”

A statement issued by the head of the Public Information Office of North Korea’s Ministry of Defense accuses South Korea and the United States of “expanding provocative joint military exercises and maximizing military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”

It says the exercises involved more than 200 fighter jets, 40 combat ships and the US Army’s chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear attack response units “in an extremely reckless and dangerous military action based on a blatant invasion of the sacred territory of our country.”

These “provocative” military exercises make the Korean Peninsula “the world’s largest hotspot,” the North says. “The accumulation of such threatening actions stimulates military tensions and pushes the region’s safe environment into a catastrophic situation that cannot be reversed.”

“The madness of the United States and its followers, which are crazy about unilateral military provocation and severely threatens regional peace and stability, clearly contrasts with the long-cherished love for peace of autonomous sovereign states in the region.”

The North says its defensive measures “will neutralize the danger” brought about by the military exercises of the United States and South Korea.

The statement concluded: “Our military will never tolerate the military actions of the United States and South Korea, which threaten the security environment of the Korean Peninsula, and will comprehensively guarantee national security and regional peace with force and action. The hostile forces will never be able to escape their heavy responsibility for the intensification of the situation and will pay the appropriate price.”