North Korea on Tuesday denounced a recent U.S.-led multinational naval exercise as a "war rehearsal" and threatened to respond with a "deterrence of new level." An article, attributed to "a military commentator" and published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), pointed to the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise as evidence of deepening military cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan, and called it "a war rehearsal of aggression." RIMPAC, the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise, took place in and around the Hawaiian Islands from June 24 to July 31. The article cited the expanded operational roles played by South Korea and Japan in the drills as proof of Washington's push for trilateral interoperability and an attempt to "establish an absolute military hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region." "The deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet openly said that the commanding role of the ROK and Japan was not a symbolic one but for the actual operation," the article said, using South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea. "This goes t