North Korea’s ruling party daily on Tuesday warned that the South will “pay a painful price” for its staging of what it described as its “aggressive” military drills with the U.S.

The Rodong Sinmun article comes the same day that Seoul and Washington are set to complete a downscaled command post exercise (CPX), staged throughout the month as an alternative to the now-terminated Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) drills.

The “large-scale joint military exercise undoubtedly shows the real characteristic of provocative war rehearsal of invading North Korea,” the newspaper, an organ of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), said in a