An article published in a North Korean state newspaper raised the chilling threat of nuclear war over recent bombing drills in South Korea by U.S. forces, it was reported Sunday. According to Fox News, the commentary, titled “U.S. Military Provocation under Fire,” was originally published in the ruling party’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Sunday and was republished by the state-run Korea Central News Agency.

The threat came one day after American B-1B supersonic bombers dropped inert bombs over South Korea in a joint exercise. Fox News described the drill as “a show of force” to counter North Korea’s firing of an ICBM.

“The U.S. warmongers sent a formation of B-1B strategic bombers to south Korea to stage a nuclear bombing drill aiming at strategic targets in the DPRK on Saturday,” the article read. “Unlike the past drills they openly took pictures of bombing flight and opened it to media.

“Timed to coincide with that, the U.S. imperialists infiltrated Aegis destroyer USS Mustin into Korea’s East Sea from its mother port in Yokosuka, Japan. It sailed more than 120 miles past the economic waters of the DPRK to conduct a spy mission.”

According to UPI, this isn’t the first time the North Koreans have accused the Mustin of violating its waters on a spy mission. Last month, KCNA claimed that the Mustin “trespassed more than (120 miles) into our economic zone and wandered around while conducting espionage and taking decisive action to create a serious military provocation.”

Proof of this charge, to the best of our knowledge, has not been forthcoming — hardly a surprise when you consider the evidentiary standards of the Juche regime or their sub-Pravda press organs.

This time, however, the North Koreans unsubtly threatened to turn the Korean Peninsula into a glow-stick for a few hundred years over what they called “reckless military provocations.”

“The U.S. openly said it would regularize sortie of the strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula. This is nothing but a frantic move declaring the will to play with fire on a powder house,” KCNA said. “The danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula is reaching an extreme pitch owing to the reckless military provocations of the U.S. imperialists.”

They also said that Donald Trump and his administration, “suffering a serious ruling crisis is going to seek a way out in escalating tension on the Korean peninsula and in the region and provoking a war,” a statement that feels eerily like it could have been uttered on MSNBC to this reporter.

Look, I read plenty of KCNA/Rodong Sinmun propaganda for my job here at Conservative Tribune, and I can vouchsafe that the only threatened attack in those pages that has been perpetrated thus far are the daily crimes against proper use of the English language that both publications seem to revel in.

However, even when you consider that most of the Juche regime’s nuclear saber-rattling is about positioning, it’s still a persistent threat. The difference is that they now have ICBM technology that could theoretically reach Alaska — and even if those weapons cannot carry atomic warheads now, that means North Korea is coming ever closer to being able to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon.

Yes, these may be threats in fish-wrapper propaganda newspapers coming from a country where there aren’t even fish to wrap. That doesn’t mean the Trump administration shouldn’t respond as strongly as possible.