North Korea urged the United States on Monday to withdraw its forces from South Korea, saying that a recent inter-Korean deal on easing military tension shows their own capacity to protect the peace without outside help.

North Korea has condemned the joint military drills between Seoul and Washington as a war rehearsal for invasion against the North, consistently calling on the U.S. to withdraw its 28,500 forces stationed in the South.

An unidentified spokesman from North Korea's foreign ministry reiterated the North's call, saying that the inter-Korean agreement showed the two countries' capacity to protect peace in the spirit of "by our nation itself."

"Such trite pretext of the U.S. that its forces' presence in South Korea 'ensures stability on the Korean Peninsula' is no longer workable," the spokesman said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

The two Koreas reached a landmark deal on Aug. 25 to make efforts to mend their frayed ties and push for the resumption of reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the division of the two Koreas. U.S. forces' presence in South Korea came as the Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving South and North Korea technically at war.

The spokesman said that the Seoul-Washington joint military exercises have become a "main factor of aggravating confrontation and distrust" not only between the North and the U.S., but also between the two Koreas.

"The withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea has become a requirement of the times, which brooks no further delay," he said. (Yonhap)