North Korea accuses US of threatening war with anti-missile test, drills

North Korea has accused the United States of threatening war by carrying out a test of its missile defense system and conducting joint military exercises with the South. The North's Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a semi-official agency in charge of inter-Korean exchanges, also attacked South Korea for taking part in the annual war games and said it would build up its own self-defense deterrent. "Judging from its scale and contents, it amounted to a virtual declaration of war against us," the committee said in reference to the Ulchi Focus Lens military drills. Some 9,000 US troops and an undisclosed number of South Korean soldiers took part in the 10-day war games which ended Friday. "They even conducted missile tests aimed at attacking us from South Korea and the US mainland and intercepting our missiles," it said in a statement broadcast by Pyongyang's Chung-ang Radio. The United States successfully tested its controversial ballistic missile defense system over the Pacific Friday, almost two months after North Korea stoked international tensions with a long-range missile test. The US Missile Defense Agency said a ground-based interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California hit a dummy armed missile in space that had been fired from Kodiak, Alaska. "This shows clearly that the United States is the main culprit who raises tension and brings about the danger of a war on the Korean peninsula," the North Korean committee said. "It is a folly that the United States wields truncheons of power in order to scare someone into submission... This only leads the army and the people to firm up their determination to build up our self-defensive military deterrence," it said. Turning on South Korea, it said Seoul was committing an "unpardonable, treacherous crime" by joining the United States in the war games. "It constitutes a serious breach of the June 15 joint declaration and an unpardonable, treacherous crime, which destroys inter-Korean relations and brings about the dark clouds of a nuclear war to the fatherland," it said.