SEOUL, Aug. 19 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Wednesday continued to denounce a joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States, even after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a scaling back of combined drills with Seoul.

The North slammed the Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise that kicked off Monday for an 11-day run, vowing to "completely neutralize the enemies military threat" and exercise its right to self-defense, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

North Korea's "exercise of its right to self-defense will continue to completely neutralize the enemies' military threat until the enemy states give up their reckless dream of overwhelming someone by force," a commentary carried by the KCNA showed.

"All the war drills for aggression staged by the enemy states in the Korean peninsula and the region will never produce the results desired by them," it said.

North Korea made no mention of Trump's recent order to scale back the annual combined exercise, a move widely seen as a conciliatory gesture aimed at reviving dialogue with Pyongyang.

Instead, the commentary criticized the exercise at length, claiming the joint drills had grown more sophisticated and increasingly geared toward actual combat.

"All the elements of the war drill have been developing into extremely dangerous ones, quite different from the past ones," it said, claiming the exercise was designed to improve allied combat readiness against the North and secure dominance over the regional security order.

The KCNA also targeted what it described as the expanding role of the U.S.-led U.N. Command, which it said had played only an "auxiliary role" in the UFS exercise only a few years ago, as now moving to revive its combat function in earnest, a development it said "can not be overlooked."

It claimed South Korea "is turning into not only the training ground" for the South Korea-U.S. military alliance, but "a gathering place of multinational aggression forces and a test ground of modern warfare," seeking to dominate its security sphere.

"All the war drills for aggression staged by the enemy states in the Korean peninsula and the region will never produce the results desired by them," it warned.

jaeyeon.woo@yna.co.kr

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