North Korea warns South Korea, Japan will be nuclear 'cannon fodder'

SEOUL, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- North Korean state media has warned that strengthening trilateral ties with Washington risks turning the people of South Korea and Japan into "cannon fodder" for a nuclear attack.

An unsigned commentary in state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday said that military threats from the United States have forced the North into "bolstering up its nuclear war deterrence."

"The DPRK's 'nuclear threat,' touted by the U.S., is an inevitable result of the latter's deep-rooted hostile policy toward the former that has lasted decades after decades and generation after generation," the KCNA article said.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

The article added that growing security ties among the United States, Japan and Tokyo in response to North Korean threats has created a "serious tripartite security crisis" in the region.

"The strengthened tripartite security cooperation trumpeted by the U.S. has only made the peoples of Japan and the puppet ROK cannon fodder of nuclear war," the article said, using the official acronym for South Korea.

The three allies held a summit in Camp David last year and have since ramped up their military partnership, including holding the first trilateral multi-domain military exercise in June.

The countries signed a memorandum of cooperation on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework last month, aimed at further institutionalizing cooperation against threats from China and North Korea.

The KCNA commentary also criticized a recent op-ed in the Washington Post co-authored by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken , Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which declared North Korea's nuclear threat as a top security challenge in the Indo-Pacific region.

"The reckless expansion of the military bloc system based on the U.S. nuclear weapons that wrecks the balance of force in the region is bound to invite strong counteraction of independent states possessed of nuclear weapons," the KCNA article said.

"The U.S. should always remember that it could live in peace and calm only when we live in peace and comfort," it added.

The comments come ahead of a major U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise slated to begin next week.

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise will be held from Aug. 19-29 and will include live field maneuvers, computer simulation-based command post exercises and related civil defense drills.

Pyongyang frequently condemns the allies' joint drills as preparation for an invasion and has used them as a pretext for its own weapons tests and provocations.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced that Pyongyang would deploy 250 new nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline positions along the border with the South.

Since early June, North Korea has also sent thousands of balloons carrying scrap paper, manure and discarded clothes into the South in a revival of Cold War-era psychological warfare.