He made the comments in a Sunday interview with Press TV about the upcoming two parallel annual drills - Key Resolve and Foal Eagle -- that will begin on Monday and involve over 300,000 South Korean troops and 15,000 US personnel.
About 2,100 US troops and a number of military warships have arrived in South Korea to partake in the war games, according to the Marine Corps Times.
Pyongyang regularly condemns the joint military exercises between Washington and Seoul as rehearsals for war against
North Korea.The US rejects any relationship between the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and its alleged satellite launch the next month, saying the drills were planned long before.
Pre-planned or not, "[the drills] always represent something of a provocative move," Jones said.
"What is happening now in terms of the US-South Korea relationship is provocative not only for North Korea, but also for China," the analyst said, arguing that Pyongyang was getting along with Beijing to calm the Korean peninsula before Washington floated deploying advanced missile systems to South Korea.