ISTANBUL 

North Korea on Tuesday warned of a “strong counteraction” against what it called “reckless expansion of the military bloc system” in the region. 

“The reckless expansion of the military bloc system based on the US nuclear weapons that wrecks the balance of force in the region is bound to invite strong counteraction of independent states possessed of nuclear weapons,” state-run KCNA said in a report.

It added that the tripartite security cooperation with the US has “only made the peoples” of Japan and South Korea “cannon fodder of nuclear war, rather than giving benefits to the two stooges,” it said.

Pyongyang was responding to a joint article by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who touted "unprecedented" trilateral cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo.

According to Pyongyang, the trumpeting of the “nuclear threat” posed by North Korea “is an inevitable result” of the US’ “deep-rooted hostile policy.”

“As recognized by the international community, it is the US that compelled the DPRK (North Korea) to have access to nuclear weapons and it is none other than the successive US administrations that have pushed the DPRK into bolstering up its nuclear war deterrence,” it added.

Pyongyang’s statement came as US forces deployed in South Korea held live-fire drills near the border with North Korea last week.

The drills were designed to “check its readiness to swiftly deploy from the US mainland.”

Last week, North Korea also slammed Germany’s joining the US-led UN Command as an “Asian version of NATO.”

The UN Command was established on July 24, 1950 following the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, with China on the side of North Korea. The war ended in 1953 in armistice, after which the US deployed around 28,500 soldiers in South Korea.

It is headquartered in the US Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea.

Besides South Korea, its members include the US, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Türkiye, which also fought in the Korean War, with hundreds of Turkish soldiers giving their lives.

Germany joined the command last Friday.