North Korea Threatens War Against Japan Over Missile (Update3)
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By Jonathan Tirone
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea’s government vowed to wage war against Japan if Japanese defense forces try to shoot down a missile that the communist nation says will carry a communications satellite.
“Should Japan dare recklessly to intercept the DPRK’s satellite, its army will consider this as the start of Japan’s war of reinvasion more than six decades after the Second World War,” the official Korean Central News Agency said today in an e-mailed statement. North Korea is also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada ordered his forces on March 27 to shoot down any North Korean object entering his country’s airspace and deployed guided-missile units around Tokyo. Japan, along with the U.S., China, South Korea and Russia want to forestall North Korea’s plans to launch what the government in Pyongyang calls a “peaceful” satellite, and refocus on joint efforts to end its nuclear program.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today the regime’s rhetoric toward Japan “regarding the Japanese right to defend itself” is an “unfortunate and continuing example of provocation.”
Speaking at a press conference in The Hague, Clinton reiterated that North Korea would face consequences at the United Nations for such a launch.
North Korea’s Accusation
North Korea accuses Japan of using the missile launch, scheduled to take place between April 4 and 8, as a pretext to build its own nuclear arsenal. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on March 29 called the launch “a mask” for development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
“The primary aim sought by Japan through this is to bring the six-party talks to collapse and delay the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and thus justify its ambition for nuclear weaponization,” according to the KCNA statement.
Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, said North Korea’s “belligerent rhetoric towards its neighbors is unhelpful and counterproductive.”
The six-party joint statement of September 2005 called for North Korea to improve its relations with Japan and to promote peace and stability in Northeast Asia, Chang said in an e-mailed statement.
“We urge North Korea to uphold its commitments and to refrain from provocative actions that increase tensions in the region,” he said.
Japan doesn’t have atomic weapons and is the only country to have nuclear armaments used against it, during World War II. North Korea tested an atomic weapon in 2006 in the Korean peninsula’s first nuclear detonation. |
