SEOUL: North Korea accused US spy planes of violating its air space and threatened to shoot them down, ramping up tensions just before Nato leaders meet this week in Lithuania for their annual summit.
A spokesman for North Korea’s defense ministry said the US was engaging in “the most undisguised nuclear blackmail” by planning to bring a nuclear-armed submarine to the peninsula and conducting “hostile espionage activities” by flying spy planes off its east and west coasts, the state’s Korean Central News Agency reported Monday.