ANKARA 

North Korea has slammed recent joint military exercises by arch-rivals US, Japan and South Korea near its waters, calling them “suicidal hysteria," state media reported on Monday. 

“Freedom Edge, the first multi-domain joint military exercises between the US, Japan and the ROK (Republic of Korea) staged shortly ago in the waters near the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), was the height of confrontational hysteria against it," Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement carried by state-run Korean Central News Agency.

"The war drumbeats clearly showed that the US and other hostile forces' rash maneuvers for military hegemony in the region have crossed the red line," added Kim, who is also the vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea.

“I affirm that such an undisguised war game being staged by the enemy near the border of the DPRK is just an inexcusable and explicit provocation that aggravates the situation," she went on to say.

She further said that "war energy" has been “over-concentrated” on the Korean peninsula and its vicinity to reach the “brink of explosion” due to various war games of the US and other “hostile forces,” and ceaseless deployment of their cutting-edge war hardware.

“Then, the question is why the enemy kicked off such war drills near the border, suicidal hysteria, for which they will have to sustain terrible disaster,” she warned.