The U.S. Defense Department on Tuesday dismissed North Korea's repeated demand, coupled with war threats, that the U.S. stop regular joint military trainings with South Korea.

"Our exercises will continue and we continue to call on the North to meet its international obligations," Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said at a press briefing.

He stressed that Washington's commitment to its alliance with Seoul and the security of the Korean Peninsula remain "steadfast and iron-clad."

The official was responding to Pyongyang's claim that the ongoing Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercise is a preparation for aggression.

A senior North Korean diplomat in New York urged the U.N. Security Council to discuss the issue, saying the allies are putting the peninsula on the brink of war.

"We sent a letter again to the U.N. Security Council requesting that it discuss the South Korea-U.S. joint military training as an emergency agenda," Ri Tong-il, the North's deputy chief of mission to the U.N., said at a press conference Monday.

The North's state media also called on the international community to speak up against the allies' move.

"The international community should take issue with the joint military exercise being conducted in South Korea," the Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the Workers' Party of Korea, said in a commentary.

Should South Korea and the U.S. continue such military drills, the North will be left with no other choice but to take "self-defensive measures," an expression Pyongyang often uses apparently to refer to a nuclear attack, it said. (Yonhap)