AKIPRESS.COM - North Korea has warned that it may carry out further nuclear tests and says it is prepared to launch a preemptive strike on the United States if U.S. nuclear forces mobilize against it, NBC News reported.

"The U.S. has nuclear weapons off our coast, targeting our country, our capital and our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Un," a top North Korean official, Lee Yong Pil, said.

"We will not step back as long as there's a nuclear threat to us from the United States," added Lee, who is director of the Foreign Ministry's Institute for American Studies.

"A preemptive nuclear strike is not something the U.S. has a monopoly on," he said. "If we see that the U.S. would do it to us, we would do it first... We have the technology."

Such threats have been a staple of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un since he took power after his father's death in 2011. U.S. officials do not believe Pyongyang possesses weapons able to reach the continental United States.

Lee also warned that North Korea may carry out "a sixth, a seventh or an eighth" nuclear test.

Lee said his government's stance was being driven by "the increasingly aggressive" drills by the United States and the South.

Another North Korean official said that the reclusive nation already has the capability to reach the U.S. mainland with a rocket. Hwang Yongnam, who is authorized to speak about the country's missile program, said the Pentagon is lying when it says the North cannot yet reach the continental United States with a weapon.

But it's not just weapons the country's interested in, according to Ri Won Hyok, a senior official involved in North Korea's fledgling space program.

Ri said that Pyongyang is also launching rockets to carry satellites into space and that "in the future our goal is not just going to the moon, but to the other planets."