BRUSSELS (Yonhap News) ― North Korea should stop its provocations that are posing a threat to regional and international security, the chief of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) said Monday, expressing deep concern over recent developments on the Korean Peninsula.

“We are watching the development in the Korean Peninsula with great concern,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency Monday at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

“North Korea’s rhetoric, attitude and actions are provocative.

North Korea’s actions pose a threat to regional and international security. They’re irresponsible; they are in defiance of the international community.

“So I have a very clear message to North Korea. Stop what you are saying. Stop what you are doing.”

Inter-Korean tension has been escalating in recent weeks due to North Korea’s repeated threats to wage war in anger over joint military exercises by South Korea and the United States, and a new U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the communist country’s Feb. 12 nuclear test.

Before the nuclear test, the North launched a long-range rocket in December in violation of U.N. resolutions banning the communist state from testing ballistic missile technology.

Over the past week, North Korea has not allowed South Koreans to enter the joint industrial complex in its border city of Kaesong, causing major disruptions to the park’s operations. On Tuesday, the South Korean government said North Korean workers had failed to show up for work earlier in the day.

The NATO chief stressed, however, that the alliance has no intentions to engage militarily in Asia, saying that the group’s security guarantee only covers its 28 member states across North America and Europe.

Still, NATO is aware that the security situation in East Asia could also affect its members, including the United States, in particular, he said.

North Korea claims that its missile and nuclear tests are aimed at defending itself against what it calls hostile U.S. policy toward the communist regime. The North has also threatened to strike the mainland U.S.

Rasmussen’s remarks came ahead of a three-day visit to South Korea later this week.

The NATO chief is scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Thursday and hold a series of meetings with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin.

It will be the first-ever visit of a NATO secretary general to South Korea, although Rasmussen visited the country once before as the then Danish prime minister.

In the meetings, the two sides are expected to discuss ways to further develop their partnership in such areas as counter-terrorism, cyber security, maritime security, including counter-piracy, as well as the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and disaster relief, the NATO chief said.

He also plans to visit the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone along the inter-Korean border.

“I want to see with my own eyes how the situation has developed. I visited the demilitarized zone last time I visited the Republic of Korea as prime minister of Denmark,” Rasmussen said, referring to South Korea by its official name. “But of course I also want to demonstrate that the whole of the international community, which also includes NATO, is watching the situation on the Korean Peninsula with great concern.”

Although it is not a member, South Korea has maintained close cooperation with NATO and stationed hundreds of troops to protect its civilian reconstruction workers in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.