Seoul: North Korea has denounced Japan’s new security strategy as fundamentally changing the regional security environment and warned it will show how “wrong” and “dangerous” Japan’s choice is with unspecified actions, official news agency KCNA reported.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson made the remarks in a statement carried by KCNA, days after Japan unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War II as regional tension and Russia’s Ukraine invasion stoke war fears.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s government has issued a veiled threat against Japan.Credit:KCNA/AP

“Japan is bringing a serious security crisis on the Korean Peninsula and in the East Asia region by adopting a new security strategy that effectively acknowledges its preemptive strike capabilities against other countries,” the official said in the statement.

The strategy effectively formalised a “new aggression policy” and would bring a fundamental change in East Asia’s security environment.

“We make it clear once again that we have the right to take bold and decisive military measures to protect our fundamental rights … in response to the complicated regional security environment,” the official said.

“Japan will soon learn with a shudder it has made a clearly wrong and very dangerous choice.”

Tokyo’s sweeping, five-year plan, once unthinkable in pacifist Japan, will make the country the world’s third-biggest military spender after the United States and China, based on current budgets.

The spokesperson slammed the United States for “exalting and instigating Japan’s rearmament and re-invasion plan,” saying Washington no right to raise issue with Pyongyang’s efforts to bolster North Korea’s defence.

“We will continue to demonstrate through practical actions how much we are concerned and displeased with Japan’s unjust and greedy attempts to realise its ambitions,” the spokesperson said.

In a separate statement, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said Pyongyang’s efforts to develop a spy satellite were a “pressing priority directly linked to our security” and additional sanctions would not stop that.

South Korea would “cry out for some kind of international cooperation and try hard to impose additional sanctions on us,” she said in the separate KCNA dispatch.

Reuters

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