TEHRAN, Jun. 26 (MNA) – South Korea and the United States are pushing the Korean peninsula to "the brink of a nuclear war," the North Korean foreign ministry’s Institute for American Studies warned in a report on Monday.

The report says that the United States is encroaching upon the sovereignty and security of North Korea more persistently this year, something that Pyongyang can no longer tolerate.

"...bellicose moves of the US have pushed the military tensions on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia already plunged into an extremely unstable situation closer to the brink of a nuclear war," the report, released by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), says, as quoted by the South Korean Yonhap news agency.

The report slams Washington and South Korea for their "delusional anti-communist military confrontation" and "rhetorical threats" and says that a war on the peninsula would "rapidly expand into a world war and a thermonuclear war unprecedented in the world," causing "the most catastrophic and irreversible consequences."

The North Korean foreign ministry’s Institute for American Studies warned that Pyongyang will continue to boost its self-defense capabilities if Washington persists with its hostile policy against North Korea.

MNA/PR