North Korea calls planned U.S.-South Korea military exercise a 'catastrophe'
North Korea’s official media sharply criticized South Korea and the United States for pressing ahead with joint military exercises next week amid heightened tensions on the peninsula.
North Korea has long criticized the annual military exercises the U.S. conducts with South Korea, regarding them as a rehearsal for an invasion of the North.
North's Korea’s Central News Agency said the joint exercises. would "further drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula into a catastrophe," according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
The U.S.-South Korean exercise, called Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, will involve about 17,500 U.S. servicemen, including 3,000 from outside South Korea, the Pentagon said. The exercise runs between Aug. 21-31.
The exercise is “a regularly scheduled, annual exercise and is the culmination of many months of planning,” Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement earlier this week.
The comments from North Korea come amid heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea, which has pressed ahead with a nuclear weapons program despite international condemnation.
North Korea had threatened to fire a missile into the waters off Guam, a U.S. territory that holds two major U.S. military bases. It later said it would postpone the missile launch, pending U.S. actions.
But the threats triggered a stern warning from Washington.
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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday the U.S. military would be prepared to intercept any missile heading toward the U.S. territory or that of its allies.
“In the event of a missile launch towards the territory of Japan, Guam, United States, Korea, we would take immediate, specific actions to take it down,” Mattis said.