"It is a custom and very basic common sense that any country in the world takes the founding anniversary of its military very seriously and celebrates it with extravagant events," according to the paper.

Last month, North Korea announced that it will celebrate the army foundation day on Feb. 8 starting this year instead of the country's past celebration on April 25. The newly designated date falls on the day before the opening of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea's PyeongChang.

This led to wild media speculations in and outside of South Korea that the North's military parade for the anniversary celebration may lead to military provocations and dampen the inter-Korean reconciliatory mood formed by North Korea's rare participation in the upcoming Olympics.

The Rodong Sinmun indicated that the new date has nothing to do with the Olympics, pointing to the fact that North Korea's standing army was in fact put together on Feb. 8 some seven decades ago. The North did mark the date as the army foundation anniversary before the country started to celebrate the anniversary in April in 1978.

The newspaper called outside criticism of the rescheduling a "malicious accusation."

It also slammed South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon for forecasting, "North Korea's military parade is highly likely to be a very threatening one."

If the South Korean government continues to condone such criticism of North Korea, it will only cast clouds over its hosting of the Olympics, the newspaper said, adding the South's government will be made to take responsibility for that. (Yonhap)