Only days after generating global headlines by welcoming Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, North Korea recaptured the limelight by threatening to renew hostilities with South Korea and the US.

Pyongyang said that if the US and South Korea were to proceed with a joint military exercise, it would unilaterally abandon the armistice that ended the Korean war, even though it announced in 2009 it had already done so. “The exercises cannot be construed otherwise than the most dangerous nuclear war manoeuvres,” a spokesman said on Tuesday, state media reported.

North Korea made its threat after China and the US agreed to impose new sanctions in reply to its third nuclear test, carried out last month. Pyongyang argued against sanctions, citing the need to protect its “sovereignty”, a word used six times in the statement.