The comments, made on North Korean news agency KCNA, came only hours before Japan and South Korea attended NATO’s annual summit as observers for the first time. Representatives from both countries will also meet US President Joe Biden to discuss North Korea in the first trilateral summit between the nations since 2017.
In August the three countries will also conduct a combined missile detection and tracking exercise known as Pacific Dragon near Hawaii.
However, the KCNA said that the US was “hell bent” on military cooperation with its “stooges”.
They said: “The US is getting hell-bent on the military cooperation with its stooges in disregard of the primary security demand and concern by Asia-pacific countries.
“The scheme for formation of the US – Japan-South Korea military alliance, motivated by Japan’s and South Korea’s kowtowing to the US, is evidently a dangerous prelude to the creation of ‘Asian version of NATO’.”
KCNA carried a separate comments from Kim Hyo-myung, a researcher at North Korea’s International Society for Political Research, who said NATO was responsible for the war in Ukraine, and that there are “ominous signs that sooner or later the black waves in the North Atlantic will break the calm in the Pacific”.
He added: “NATO is nothing more than a servant of the realisation of the US hegemony strategy and a tool of local aggression.”
The North Korean foreign ministry released a similar statement over the weekend arguing that the military drills showed the hypocrisy of the US offers of diplomatic engagement and dialogue without preconditions.
However, North Korea itself has conducted a record number of missile tests this year.
READ MORE: Putin sends in old men and reserves as Russia ‘running low on leaders’
Mieko Nakabayashi, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University told Time that the attendance of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the summit in Madrid was a “turning point” for the nation that still has a pacifist constitution.
She said: “Japanese people realise the world is changing and Japan is pretty vulnerable.
“The Ukraine war was so incomprehensible for many Japanese people that it served as a wake-up call.
“The decline of American hegemony has convinced Japanese people that just being with the US is not safe enough.”
Lyle Goldstein, director for Asia engagement at the Washington D.C.-based Defence Priorities think tank and a visiting professor at Brown University said Russia could feel that South Korea was being provocative by attending.
He said: “If South Korea is going to burn those bridges with Moscow, I’m concerned that the situation could escalate in the Korean peninsula with Russia playing a more robust role to support Pyongyang.
“No doubt, Pyongyang is one of the big winners in the whole Ukraine war.”
