On Thursday, official media KCNA accused the U.S. and South Korea of raising tensions to the verge of nuclear war with their joint military drills and threatened “offensive action.”

KCNA quoted foreign security specialist Choe Ju Hyon as calling the exercises “a trigger for bringing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the verge of explosion.”

“The reckless militarily aggressive mania of the U.S. and its adherents against the DPRK is leading the Korean peninsula to an irreversible catastrophe… to the verge of a nuclear war,” the piece warned.

It used North Korea’s official abbreviation, DPRK.

Since March, U.S. and South Korean troops have conducted regular springtime exercises, including air and sea drills with a U.S. aircraft carrier and B-1B and B-52 bombers and their first large-scale amphibious landing maneuvers in five years.

The analysis said Pyongyang would take “offensive action” in response to the drills.

“The exercises have converted the Korean peninsula into a giant powder magazine which can be ignited any moment,” it continued.

North Korea has denounced the exercises as invasion preparations.

Recently, it has unveiled miniaturized nuclear warheads, fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that can strike any place in the U.S., and tested a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone.

After meeting in Seoul on Thursday, South Korean and U.S. nuclear envoys criticized the tests and warned the North would pay for its provocations, Seoul’s foreign ministry said.

It stated that the envoys agreed to increase measures to stop the North’s cybercrime, including hacking and virtual currency theft.

Han Tae Song, North Korea’s permanent envoy in Geneva, sharply attacked an annual resolution the U.N. Human Rights Council voted on the country’s rights status in a separate KCNA dispatch.

Pyongyang has traditionally dismissed international criticism of its human rights violations as a U.S.-led coup.

Han branded the resolution “intolerable political provocation and enmity” and “the most strongly politicised piece of deception.”

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has urged awareness of Pyongyang’s rights violations.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry claimed North Korea kills its nationals for drug use, distributing South Korean media and religious activities in its first public report last week.

On Thursday, the inter-Korea relations ministry criticized North Korea for utilizing South Korean assets at a closed joint manufacturing park.

On Wednesday, North Korean official media showed a South Korean bus that transported workers before the North unilaterally closed the park in 2016 in Pyongyang.

The government warned the North via a border hotline against utilizing manufacturing equipment without permission, but the North ignored it.