North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, has condemned upcoming joint military drills by the United States, Japan, and South Korea as a “reckless show of strength” that will bring “bad results,” state media reports on Sunday.

The powerful vice department director of the North Korean governing party’s central committee issues the warning ahead of the “Freedom Edge” exercises, set to run through Friday off South Korea’s Jeju Island, combining naval, air, and missile defense operations.

“The reckless display of power displayed by the US, Japan, and South Korea in the wrong places, namely around the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, will undoubtedly bring about negative consequences for themselves,” Kim states via the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The allies, including 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea, plan additional “Iron Mace” tabletop exercises to integrate conventional and nuclear capabilities against North Korean threats.

Kim’s remarks follow her brother’s visit to weapons facilities, where he vows to advance nuclear and conventional forces simultaneously. Pyongyang has long viewed such drills as invasion rehearsals, often responding with weapons tests. “If hostile forces continue to boast about their power through those joint drills, North Korea will take countermeasures more clearly and strongly,” top party official Pak Jong Chon adds via KCNA.

Since the 2019 US summit failure on denuclearization, North Korea declares itself an “irreversible” nuclear state, emboldened by its Ukraine war support to Russia, including thousands of troops, under a 2024 mutual defense pact.

This rhetoric, set against the Korean Peninsula’s division since 1945, escalates tensions as the allies claim the exercises are purely defensive amid North Korea’s nuclear advancements.