N. Korea vows to bolster nuclear deterrent to cope with U.S. threat

SEOUL, Aug. 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korea threatened Wednesday to strengthen its nuclear deterrent as it denounced South Korea and the United States for conducting their annual military drills that Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for invasion. The two allies kicked off the computer-aided Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise on Tuesday to improve their defense posture against North Korea and simulate destroying North Korea's weapons of mass destruction. North Korea has frequently accused South Korea and the U.S. of plotting to launch a nuclear war on the North, a charge that Seoul and Washington have repeatedly denied. The North's Foreign Affairs Ministry accused the U.S. of seeking to strip the North of its nuclear deterrent, calling the participation of a special team tasked with destroying the North's nuclear weapons "very ill-boding." "It is self-evident that the (North) should put spurs to bolstering its nuclear deterrent for self-defense both in quality and quantity to cope with this situation," the Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The statement warned of unspecified "merciless counteraction" against any U.S. attempt to do harm to the North. Still, the North also reaffirmed its commitment to keep peace and denuclearize the peninsula through dialogue and negotiations. The North, which conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, has made similar threats in recent years to boost its nuclear deterrent force in an apparent reference to its nuclear weapons programs. In a separate statement also carried by KCNA on late Wednesday, the North's Committee for Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland denounced the joint South Korea-U.S. military drills as a "declaration of an all-out war" against North Korea. "Our army and people will mercilessly crush the provocative war maneuver," an unnamed spokesman for the North's committee said in the statement. The latest comments come weeks after a senior North Korean diplomat met with his U.S. counterpart in New York to discuss how to resume long-stalled talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs. The U.S. keeps some 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. entropy@yna.co.kr