SpaceWar.com reports: “North Korea warned Thursday it would respond with ‘overwhelming deterrence’ against the United States following Washington’s deployment of B-1B strategic bombers to the Korean Peninsula for a joint air exercise with South Korea this week.

The allies’ drills represent an ‘open threat to the security of our state and a grave provocation that raises the military tension in the region to an extreme dangerous level,’ a spokesperson for North Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement carried by state-run Korean Central News Agency.

‘The DPRK will exercise the overwhelming deterrence and continue to make the U.S. recognize that its unannounced deployment of strategic means is a reckless and unnecessary abuse of strength,’ the spokesperson said, using the official acronym for North Korea. ‘The higher the level of provocation against the DPRK is, the greater the level of danger returning to the U.S. will be.’

The United States sent a pair of B-1B strategic bombers to participate in joint drills on Tuesday, which was a holiday in North Korea marking the birthday of founder Kim Il Sung. The exercise was intended to ‘respond to the continuous threat of North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear and missile programs,’ Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

Pyongyang has frequently objected to the deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula and condemns the allies’ joint military exercises as rehearsals for an invasion…”