North Korea lashed out at the United States Thursday for clinching a military intelligence-sharing pact with South Korea and Japan, calling it “an attempt to be the hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Late last year, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan signed the pact on sharing sensitive military information on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs to better counter Pyongyang’s evolving security threats to the region and beyond.

The arrangement “is the first step for the U.S. to compete its missile defense system” in order to “cement its hegemonic status” in the Asia-Pacific region, the Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, said in a commentary.

Claiming that the intelligence the three nations will share would not only be about Pyongyang but also Russia and China, the North said the U.S. “has employed every means to militarily suppress such regional powers as China and Russia.”

“Counties in the Asia-Pacific region will never sit idle facing the schemes made through the trilateral military alliance mechanism,” the newspaper warned.

The criticism comes at a time when the relations between North Korea and the U.S. have been in poor shape, with Washington intensifying its pressure on the communist country while rejecting its charm offensive.

On Saturday, Washington spurned North Korea’s offer to suspend nuclear tests in exchange for the U.S. scrapping joint military drills with South Korea.

Early this month, the U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on Pyongyang in retaliation for its alleged cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, blacklisting three North Korean entities and 10 officials. (Yonhap)