North Korea warns Korean Peninsula close to 'brink of nuclear war'

North Korea fires a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile from the Sunan area in Pyongyang on Nov 19. [KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY]

North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Monday accused Seoul and Washington of pushing tensions to "the brink of a nuclear war" akin to the 1950-53 Korean War, saying it will continue to bolster its self-defensive capabilities.

In a report by the Institute for American Studies under the North's Foreign Ministry, North Korea likened the current military tensions in the region to the night before the outbreak of the Korean War as it slammed the United States and South Korea for their "delusional anti-communist military confrontation" and "rhetorical threats."

"Such bellicose moves of the United States have pushed the military tensions on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia already plunged into an extremely unstable situation closer to the brink of a nuclear war," it said in the English-language report released by state media Korean Central News Agency.

The North argued that the United States is "resorting to the worrying hostile acts of wantonly encroaching upon the sovereignty and security" of the North more persistently this year than ever before and has reached a threshold that can no longer be tolerated.

It then warned that a war on the peninsula would "rapidly expand into a world war and a thermonuclear war unprecedented in the world," causing "the most catastrophic and irreversible consequences" to peace and security in the region and the rest of the world.

Pyongyang will continue to further accelerate its efforts to bolster "its self-defensive capabilities for safeguarding its sovereignty" unless the Unites States withdraws its "anachronistic hostile policy" and persistent military threat against the North, the report said.

Yonhap