North Korea has denounced the annual military exercises between South Korea and the United States while warning of an impending nuclear conflict over recent agreements to bolster ties between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan at Camp David.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) issued the rebuke in a commentary on Tuesday, saying that an unprecedented large-scale “thermonuclear war” is approaching the Korean Peninsula at every moment.

The KCNA criticized the aggressive nature of the combined Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises between South Korea and the U.S. that began on Monday, noting the involvement of U.S. strategic nuclear assets as well as countries that joined the United Nations forces during the Korean War.

It also said that the trilateral summit between the leaders of South Korea, U.S. and Japan at the Camp David presidential retreat on Friday was aimed at formulating a "nuclear war provocation."

The KCNA said that the inclusion of agreements reached at Camp David in the war drill will render the possibility of a thermonuclear war outbreak on the Korean Peninsula more realistic.

In the North’s first response to the summit, the KCNA said that the will to punish hostile forces threatening the North’s sovereignty is waiting for a moment of incitement, warning that North Korea’s armed forces will wait for it.

[Photo : YONHAP News]