FLASH
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The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday denounced joint military exercises organized by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a "reckless show of force" that, according to her, would bring consequences.
The allies will hold joint military drills from Monday to Friday near the South's Jeju Island, combining naval, air and missile defense exercises to better prepare against threats from the nuclear-armed North.
Seoul and Washington, which have about 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, will also hold a tabletop military exercise aimed at integrating their military assets.
Kim Yo Jong criticized the drills as a "dangerous idea," in a statement broadcast by state news agency KCNA.
"The reckless display of force that they (the allies) made in real action near the DPRK, which is the wrong place, will inevitably bring bad results for themselves, " she said, using the acronym for North Korea.
Pyongyang has long opposed such joint military exercises involving allies, calling them rehearsals for an invasion.
The North perceives the trilateral exercises as "scenarios for limited or full-scale nuclear strikes and attempts to neutralize its launch platforms," Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.
"The North is likely to use allied exercises as a pretext to move forward with nuclear modernization and conventional upgrades ," he added.
Kim Jo Yong's statement comes after her brother visited weapons research centers this week, where he said Pyongyang "will present the policy of simultaneously pushing forward the construction of nuclear forces and conventional armed forces."
Since a failed summit with the United States in 2019 on denuclearization, North Korea has repeatedly said it will never give up its nuclear weapons and has declared itself an "irreversible" nuclear state.
Kim Jong Un has been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean troops to fight alongside Moscow.
Moscow and Pyongyang signed a mutual defense pact last year, when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the isolated state.
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