The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier at a naval base in Korea's southeastern city of Busan / Yonhap

North Korea condemned the United States Thursday for redeploying a U.S. aircraft carrier into the waters east of South Korea, saying that the move poses a "grave" threat to stability in the region.

The North's foreign ministry made the condemnation in a public notice, a day after the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier returned to waters near the Korean Peninsula for a joint exercise with South Korea and Japan following the North's firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) earlier this week.

North Korea is "watching the U.S. posing a serious threat to the stability of the situation on the Korean peninsula and in its vicinity by redeploying the carrier task force in the waters off the peninsula," the ministry said in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The redeployment came after Pyongyang fired a ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday, its first IRBM launch in eight months. The missile launch is widely viewed as the North's protest against Seoul and Washington's latest joint exercises.