North Korea condemned anti-proliferation drills in South Korea on Thursday, saying it will regard any attempt by Washington and Seoul to impose a "hostile blockade" on it as a declaration of war against Pyongyang.

Kim Son-gyong, vice foreign minister of the North, issued a statement criticizing the latest multinational maritime drills aimed at preventing the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), hosted by South Korea the previous day.

Citing the scale of forces and equipment involved in the drills, Kim said South Korea and the U.S. have made "far-fetched" assertions that the exercise was held for the purpose of defense and non-proliferation.

"It is quite clear that they are extremely dangerous military exercises ...for perfecting the overall embargo on the export and preparations for preemptive attack on a specified state in contingency," Kim said in an English-language statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

The North has long decried combined military drills by the South and the U.S. as rehearsals for an invasion against it, and used them as a pretext to test its weapons systems.

"If the U.S. and its vassal forces attempt to impose any hostile blockade on the DPRK or infringe upon our inviolable sovereignty even a bit, the armed forces of the DPRK will regard it as a declaration of war against it," he warned.

DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

The Eastern Endeavor 23 drills were held in waters off the southern island of Jeju under the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), involving WMD counter-proliferation activities, including on-board search operations.

Source: Yonhap News Agency