North Korea on Monday accused the United States of using South Korea as a nuclear outpost by deploying some 1,000 atomic bombs in the country.
The North's Korean National Peace Committee said the United States should be denounced for posing the greatest threat of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.
"South Korea has turned into the biggest nuclear outpost in the Far East with the deployment of about 1,000 US nuclear weapons of different types and their delivery vehicles," the committee said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
South Korea declared in 1991 that it was free of nuclear weapons after US forces withdrew tactical nuclear arms.
But the North's committee demanded the United States remove all nuclear weapons from South Korea.
"It is quite preposterous for the US to take issue with the DPRK (North Korea) over its nuclear deterrent for self-defence, while keeping mum about the criminal nuclear arms build-up it has perpetrated," it said.
North Korea called itself a nuclear-armed state following its nuclear test on October 9.
Rodong Sinmun, the North's ruling communist party newspaper, said the country's nuclear weapons program was designed to protect South Korea from a US nuclear threat.
"It is also meant to protect South Korea, too, with warm compatriotism,"
the paper said in a commentary Monday.