In a statement issued via state media on Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called the Freedom Shield drills "a dangerous provocative act of leading the acute situation on the Korean peninsula, which may spark off a physical conflict between the two sides by means of an accidental single shot, to the extreme point."

North Korea's state media on Tuesday ramped up criticism against joint military drills by South Korea and the United States, calling them a "nuclear war exercise," but made no mention of the North's ballistic missile test a day earlier.

North Korea test-fired strategic cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea in a demonstration of Pyongyang's nuclear deterrent capabilities, state-run media said Friday.