North Korea strongly criticized South Korea and the United States Tuesday for their planned anti-submarine drills near the maritime border of the two Koreas, calling them a "nuclear war rehearsal."
"It is indisputable that through the exercises, the U.S. seeks to establish its military hegemony over Northeast Asia and put this region under its control by force," Rodong Sinmun, a daily newspaper published by North Korea's Workers' Party, said in a signed commentary.
"Lurking behind such moves is an intention to contain other big powers by force of arms," it said, adding a serious situation "in which an all-out war may break out by any accident" was already prevailing in the Korean Peninsula.
The joint military exercise was earlier planned to be held Sept. 5-9 in waters off South Korea's western coast, but was delayed due to a typhoon. Seoul and Washington are expected to stage the joint exercise as early as next week.
The anti-submarine drills will be the second of their kind that have come in response to the North's torpedoing of a South Korean warship, Cheonan, in the Yellow Sea in March. Forty-six South Korean sailors died in the sinking.
"The U.S. imperialists' scheme to get the nuclear-powered carrier 'George Washington' involved in the combined anti-submarine drill to be launched in the West (Yellow) Sea of Korea by them is to make the joint military exercise a nuclear war rehearsal," the North Korean newspaper claimed.
The North also renewed its threat to take military countermeasures.
"The army and people of the DPRK can never remain an onlooker to the fact that the U.S. imperialists are posing a serious threat to its sovereignty while mobilizing huge armed forces to conduct a three-dimensional attack operation," it said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Seoul and Washington regularly hold joint military exercises as the United States continues to maintain tens of thousands of troops here since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War as a deterrent to possible military provocation from the communist North.