North Korea said Saturday it had formally entered into a “state of war” with South Korea — an announcement largely dismissed by Seoul as an old threat dressed in slightly different clothing.

It was the latest in a string of dire-sounding pronouncements from Pyongyang that have been matched by tough warnings from Seoul and Washington, fuelling international concern that the situation might spiral out of control.

“As of now, inter-Korea relations enter a state of war and all matters between the two Koreas will be handled according to wartime protocol,” the North said in a government statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

“The long-standing situation of the Korean peninsula being neither at peace nor at war is finally over,” the statement said, adding that any provocation would trigger a “full-scale conflict and a nuclear war”.

The two Koreas have technically remained at war for the past six decades because the 1950-53 Korean War concluded with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

The North had announced earlier this month that it was ripping up the armistice and other bilateral peace pacts signed with Seoul in protest against South Korea-US joint military exercises.

The government in Seoul played down the latest statement.

“This is not really a new threat — just part of a series of provocative threats,” the Unification Ministry said.

The defence ministry added that no particular troop movement had been observed along the border.

Voiding the 1953 ceasefire theoretically opened the way to a resumption of hostilities, although the armistice was approved by the UN General Assembly, and both the UN and South Korea have repudiated the North’s unilateral withdrawal.

Most observers still believe this will remain a rhetorical rather than a physical battle, but the situation has now become so volatile that any slight miscalculation carries the potential for rapid escalation.

“The North Koreans in recent weeks have turned rhetoric into performance art,” said Gordon Flake, a Korea specialist and executive director of the Mansfield Foundation in Washington.

“When they have already declared the armistice null and void, I do not think a declaration of war breaks new ground,” Flake said.

Both China and Russia asked for all sides to cooperate to prevent the situation worsening on Friday, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voicing particular concern.

“We can simply see the situation getting out of control, it would spiral down into a vicious circle,” Lavrov told reporters at a news conference.

His warning came after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un ordered missile units to prepare to strike US mainland and military bases, so as to “settle accounts” after US stealth bombers flew over South Korea.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stressed that Washington would not be cowed by Pyongyang’s bellicose threats and stood ready to respond to “any eventuality”.

The high-stakes standoff has its roots in North Korea’s successful long-range rocket launch in December and the third nuclear test it carried out in February.

Both events drew UN sanctions that incensed Pyongyang, which then switched the focus of its anger to the annual joint South Korea-US military drills.

As tensions escalated, Washington has maintained a notably assertive stance, publicising its use of nuclear-capable B-52s and B-2 stealth bombers in the war games.

The long-distance deployment of both sets of aircraft out of bases in Guam and the US mainland were intended as a clear signal of US commitment to defending South Korea against any act of aggression.

While Hagel stressed that Washington was taking the North’s threats “very seriously,” US military intelligence noted that Pyongyang’s combative rhetoric has not, so far, been matched by any overtly provocative troop build-up.

And analysts have underlined that the threats and counter-threats have increasingly stressed a conditional element of the other side acting first.

“But the danger is, when the North Koreans have threatened a nuclear attack on Washington, they may not know a limit on how much they can get away with,” said Flake.