Pyongyang regularly criticizes such drills as rehearsals for invasion and sometimes responds with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.

SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to rapidly expand its nuclear armament and called U.S.-South Korea military exercises an "obvious expression of their will to provoke war,

North Korea’s leader threatens to speed up Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal expansion over a sign of ‘hostile intent’.