Pyongyang raps Seoul for seeking closer military ties with US

Pyongyang, April 8 : North Korea on Saturday rapped South Korea for seeking a closer military alliance with the US which it said would escalate confrontation between the two sides.

"South Korean puppet conservative group, whose fate is at stake after being cursed and rejected by the public, works hard to stay in power, calling for priority to the relations with the US and strengthened alliance," Xinhua news agency quoted the official daily of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, Rodong Sinmum, as saying.

South Korean acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn has recently called on the US to strengthen its alliance with Seoul, while calling North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear arms and missiles a "provocation" and "threat".

Rodong Sinmum called the South Korea-US alliance "just a war alliance to carry out the US policy for isolating and stifling the DPRK (North Korea) and realise its foreign strategy of aggression".

"The relations between the US and the South Korean regime are no more than master-servant relations," and Seoul's policy would only further such relations, "bring the north-south ties to a catastrophe and escalate the danger of nuclear war", the newspaper warned.