The State Media reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's influential sister Kim Yo Jong warned the United States against actions that could make it "lose sleep", as top Biden administration officials began a visit to key allies Tokyo and Seoul.
"We take this opportunity to warn the new US administration trying hard to give off powder smell in our land," she said in a statement, according to the reports.
"If you wish to sleep well for the next four years, it would be better not to create work from the start that will make you lose sleep," she added.
The warning comes as the United States and the South Korea began the joint military exercises last week and US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have touched down in the region for meetings with their Japanese and South Korean counterparts, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King's College London, told Reuters.