North Korea on Sunday threatened to respond
to an imminent joint South Korea-U.S. military drill with "the worst-ever military punishment."
"Now that the uproar of the reckless military drill aiming at our republic has heightened to an extreme ... our military and people will wield
the iron hammer of a merciless response," the General Staff of the Korean People's Army said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central
News Agency. "Our military's reaction will be the worst punishment anyone has ever experienced."
The North's remarks came as South Korea is set to launch on Monday its two-week joint military drill with the U.S. The annual war game "Ulchi
Freedom Guardian (UFG)" is aimed at maintaining security and the South-U.S. defense posture on the peninsula and involves some 56,000 South Korean soldiers and 30,000 U.S. forces stationed locally and operating outside the country.
The North defined the latest joint drill as a substantial war threat by the South, saying "the war game commotion including the UFG indicates real action aiming for full-blown military aggression."
The communist regime has aired military threats since the South blamed the North for the deadly March sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan, which killed 46 South Korean crew members on the sea border between the two Koreas.
The North and South remain technically at war after their 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.