SEOUL - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Sunday denounced the large-scale joint military exercises conducted by the United States and Republic of Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Monday.

Despite the DPRK's repeated warnings, the United States and ROK are persistently staging the large-scale joint military exercises, which are "a dangerous provocative act of leading the acute situation on the Korean peninsula," KCNA said, citing a press statement released by the Department of Press and Information of the DPRK Foreign Ministry.

READ MORE: DPRK condemns US-ROK military drills for ‘maximizing’ tensions

The DPRK-US political and military confrontation "has been closer to the threshold of explosion due to the frantic US war saber-rattling directly aiming at the DPRK," with the pattern of confrontation growing increasingly dangerous, said the statement.

According to Yonhap news agency, ROK and the United States kicked off the annual joint military exercise "Freedom Shield" on Monday. The 11-day drills feature computer-simulated drills and on-field training to strengthen interoperability between the allies.