An annual war game is due to take place in South Korea could be the spark which tips the region into conflict, with a war of words over the past few months threatening to escalate into conflict.
North Korea and the US have been trading barbs, backed up by missile launches on both sides as a sign of strength and defiance.
The joint military exercise, named the "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" (UFG), kicks off Monday and will see thousands of troops from both sides taking part.
Numbers from the South’s defence ministry claim 17,500 US soldiers will participate in this year’s drills, a drop from last year.
Pyongyang views the exercise as a highly provocative rehearsal for war, which despot leader Kim Jong-un feels threatened by.
The regime’s mouthpiece, the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, fired off a warning ahead of the exercise.
It said: "The joint exercise is the most explicit expression of hostility against us, and no one can guarantee that the exercise won't evolve into actual fighting.
"The Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercises will be like pouring gasoline on fire and worsen the state of the peninsula.”
And they threatened the dawn of an "uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war" on the Korean peninsula, blaming the US.
It continued: "If the United States is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else's doorstep far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever."
The region is a tinderbox which could ignite at any moment, with tensions on a knife edge.
US president Donald Trump previously warned the hermit kingdom would be met with “fire and fury” if they crossed from empty threats into action.
Dictator Kim Jong-un declared he would fire missiles at the US territory of Guam, releasing photos of him presiding over a map with a large arrow pointing towards the island.
He later scrapped the idea, but indicated he could still strike depending on how the US acts.
General Jeong Kyeong-Doo, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for South Korea, outlined the dire situation which he branded "more serious than at any other time”.
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