North Korea has asked the United Nations Security Council to convene a meeting to discuss a joint maritime exercise between South Korea and the United States, which was held for five days from Monday.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported on Saturday that the chief of the North's mission to the United Nations made the request in a letter to the president of the Security Council on Friday.

In the letter, the North said that the United States staged again a massive joint maritime drill around the Korean Peninsula to seek a preemptive nuclear attack against North Korea.

North Korea urged the Security Council to schedule a discussion urgently, claiming that the joint military exercises, which started during the Cold War era against the North, became bigger in size and scope and more aggressive in their nature since the end of the Cold War.

The North has made similar requests to the Security Council but to no avail.