North Korea lashed out at South Korea Wednesday for its large-scale annual military drills and vowed harsh retaliation, claiming that the exercises are aimed at launching a nuclear war against the communist country.

The South Korean military on Monday kicked off the Hoguk defense exercises involving some 330,000 troops with the aim of bolstering its defense posture against growing North Korean threats. The 12-day drill is the largest ever in terms of scale.

“The rehearsal is a preliminary war, nuclear test war for aggression on the DPRK in light of its scale and content,” the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said in a statement carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency. DPRK is the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.

Saying that some of the programs would be carried out jointly with the U.S. forces, the committee claimed the South had been “bent on strengthening its military ties with the U.S. to complete its preparation for a nuclear war” against the North.

“The army and people of the DPRK will mercilessly wipe out the South Korean puppet forces if they provoke the DPRK even a bit,” the committee said.

It further criticized South Korea for not having the will to hold dialogue with the North, saying Seoul had unilaterally scuppered high-level, inter-Korean contact.

“The Hoguk rehearsal clearly proved the South Korean authorities do not hope for dialogue but have attempted to use it as a camouflage in order to escalate confrontation and war moves,” the committee noted.

North Korea has recently said it would not hold any dialogue with South Korea unless Seoul blocks activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border. On Oct. 4, the Koreas had agreed to open the talks between late October and early November.

North Korea has long criticized the Hoguk exercises, while the Seoul government has said the annual drills are to boost its joint posture and coordination between the different branches of the military.

The Koreas remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 28,500 U.S. soldiers are stationed here to deter and counter potential threats from the communist country. (Yonhap)