North Korea condemned an ongoing U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise Wednesday, saying another incident like Seoul's recent accidental bombing of its own village near the DMZ could lead to "a new armed conflict.

South Korea's military says North Korea has fired several ballistic missiles into the sea. The launch Monday happened hours after South Korean and U.S. troops kicked off their large annual combined drills,

In a statement issued via state media on Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called the Freedom Shield drills "a dangerous provocative act of leading the acute situation on the Korean peninsula, which may spark off a physical conflict between the two sides by means of an accidental single shot, to the extreme point."