N. Korea threatens to disregard armistice treaty, citing military drill

North Korea on Tuesday warned of a possible preemptive attack against U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, saying it would no longer be bound to an armistice treaty from the 1950-53 Korean War.

The warning came as part of its renewed criticism of an annual South Korea-U.S. joint military exercise, Ulji Focus Lens, which began Monday.

"As is clear to everyone, Ulji Focus Lens now underway in a terror-ridden atmosphere is obviously an undisguised military threat and blackmail against the DPRK," an unidentified spokesman for the North's Korean People's Army (KPA) said in a statement carried by the country's Korean Central News Agency.

The spokesman, based in the joint security area of Panmunjom, according to the KCNA report, also claimed the joint military exercise was "a war action going beyond the phraseology of violation" of the armistice agreement that ended the three-year Korean War.

"No one can vouch that it would not go over to an actual war," the statement said. The spokesman also said he and the North's delegation to the joint security area have been "authorized to state that the KPA side would not be bound to the armistice treaty in taking on its own military measures for protecting the security and sovereignty of the country."

Pyongyang's criticism of the United States is not new, but it marks a rare, if not unprecedented, instance of the communist state threatening to ignore the 1953 armistice treaty.

North Korea has been intensifying its criticism of the U.S. after Washington imposed financial sanctions on a Macau-based bank in September, accusing it of helping the North's communist regime launder counterfeit U.S. dollars printed in the North.

The communist state also said last month it would "bolster its military deterrent" against possible aggression from the United States after the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution against the North for test-firing seven ballistic missiles on July 5.

The Koreas remain divided along a heavily-fortified border since the end of the Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Seoul, Aug. 22 (Yonhap News)