North Korea threatened Thursday to retaliate against South Korea and the United States with "merciless blows" as Seoul and Washington are scheduled to kick off their joint military drill next week.
  

South Korea and the U.S. plan to start the 10-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise Monday, which North Korea calls a "grave provocation," a rehearsal for an invasion and a de facto declaration of war.
  

In a statement, the North's foreign ministry urged the allies to immediately drop the plan for the military training.
  

It accused the U.S. of sticking to its hostile policy against Pyongyang, losing an opportunity to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and instead bringing a "dark cloud of nuclear war."
  

"Unlike in the 1950s, we have strong military power capable of dealing with every type of war the U.S. wants," the ministry said.
  

If the U.S. continues to ignore the North's warning, it will be fully responsible for all consequences, it added.
  

It said Pyongyang will take "every necessary measure" to deter Washington's nuclear provocation.
  

The North's organ in charge of inter-Korean relations issued a separate statement denouncing the allies and threatening to launch a "merciless" attack.
  

"The DPRK is fully ready to counter any war method of the U.S. imperialists and has a muscle powerful enough to deter a nuclear war to be provoked by the U.S.," said the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea. The DPRK is the acronym of North Korea's official name: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
  

The North's threat came amid heightened military tension on the divided Korean Peninsula following an explosion of land mines near the inter-Korean border last week. Seoul blamed Pyongyang for the blast, calling on it to formally apologize for the incident that left one South Korean soldier without both legs and another without one.
  

South Korea resumed a propaganda loudspeaker campaign on Monday, a kind of psychological warfare against the North, along the tensely guarded border in retaliation for the mine blasts.
  

The North has been silent about Seoul's condemnation over the incident, but Pyongyang has spiked up its criticism of the upcoming military exercise between Seoul and Washington. (Yonhap)