North Korea: US Ramping Up Threat of Nuclear War

North Korea says the unprecedented deployment of three US aircraft carrier groups "taking up a strike posture" around the Korean peninsula is making it impossible to predict when nuclear war will break out, the AP reports. North Korea's UN ambassador, Ja Song Nam, said in a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres Monday that the joint military exercises are creating "the worst ever situation" around the peninsula.

He also said the US has reactivated round-the-clock sorties with nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers "which existed during the Cold War times." Ja said the "large-scale nuclear war exercises and blackmails, which the US staged for a whole year without a break ... make one conclude that the option we have taken was the right one and we should go along the way to the last." The three aircraft carrier groups have been taking part in a joint exercise with South Korea while Donald Trump visits Asia, Reuters reports. The last time so many carrier groups exercised together in the western Pacific was 2007. The North Korean letter came a day after Trump tweeted that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had insulted the American president by calling him "old."

(More North Korea stories.)