North Korea slams Japan for labelling Pyongyang 'urgent threat' in defence paper
The Institute for Japan Studies under North Korea's foreign ministry issued the criticism in a press statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) three days after Japan released this year's defence white paper.
The paper labelled North Korea, along with Russia and China, as a "grave and urgent threat" to Japan, expressing "serious concerns" over the possibility of North Korea receiving nuclear and missile technologies from Russia in return for military cooperation.
The North Korean statement accused Japan of being obsessed with its ambitions for reinvasion and preoccupied with securing preemptive strike capacities, citing its development of domestically produced long-range missiles and the purchase of similar weapons from abroad in recent years. The statement also labeled the white paper as "a war scenario for realizing its ambition for reinvasion," warning that Japan's moves to turn itself into a military giant seriously threaten regional peace and security and can never be tolerated, Yonhap news agency reported.
"This is nothing but shameless sophism to cover up the threatening entity of Japan which is escalating the regional situation in a gradual way and justify its reckless moves to turn itself into a military giant, leaving the whole area of the archipelago as a military outpost and logistic base for realising the US hegemony-oriented strategy in the Indo-Pacific," the statement noted.
It said Japan is now "working hard to build the capability for carrying out war of aggression such as the capability for long-range strike and trans-domain operation," adding that this is not "merely a temporary countermeasure, but a military policy (re)orientation" away from its earlier stance as a "peace state."
"The present development clearly proves once again that the efforts of (North Korea) to bolster up its nuclear war deterrence serve as an indispensable contribution to strongly suppressing the provocations of the US and its allies," the statement also noted.
In a separate commentary, the KCNA also took a swipe at Japan's joint project with the United Kingdom and Italy to develop next-generation fighter jets, calling it an attempt to restore Japan's "war alliance."
"Japan's military modernisation plot is rooted in an attempt to revive its past imperialism by restoring its 'war alliance,'" the KCNA said, claiming the joint fighter jet project paves the way for launching a war of aggression.
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