ANKARA

North Korea slammed a recent American and South Korean defense chiefs' annual meeting and said Pyongyang will treat future threats to its “sphere of security” as direct targets, state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Saturday..

No Kwang Chol, North Korea's minister of national defense, accused Washington and Seoul of "intentionally escalating the political and military tension in the region" and said his country is ready to respond to everything.

"Military bosses of the U.S. and the ROK (Republic of Korea) visited the area near the southern border of the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) to fan up war hysterics and held an annual security consultative meeting in which they conspired the strengthening of their deterrence to the DPRK and the rapid promotion of the process of integrating the nuclear forces with the conventional forces," he said in a statement.

No called the US and South Korea joint air drill "Freedom Flag" and the arrival of US nuclear carrier George Washington task force in South Korea a "further escalating the tension on the Korean peninsula."

"What does the world expect us to do, imagining what position we will be in under such circumstances?" No asked.

He added that North Korea has no other choice -- "in the future, all threats encroaching upon our sphere of security will become direct targets of the DPRK and be managed in a necessary way."

On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with his South Korean counterpart, Ahn Gyu-back, visited Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), peeking over the border into North Korea, on his maiden trip to South Korea.

The two defense chiefs visited Observation Post Ouellette, the UN Command's military facility close to the Military Demarcation Line, and the Joint Security Area in the DMZ, marking the first joint visit to the buffer zone by the countries’ defense chiefs since 2017.

The two sides later held their annual security consultative meeting.