It is a unanimous desire of all humankind to live in a peaceful and stabilized world.

But there is a country hell-bent on moving against this desire.

It was disclosed by the Japanese government officials concerned on September 3 that Japan is weighing a plan to construct ships exclusively designed to intercept ballistic missiles under the pretext of filling the “defence vacuum” created after its withdrawal of the plan for deploying the ground-based interceptor missile system “Aegis Ashore.”

The ships are reportedly to be mounted with a new type of U.S. radar “SPY-7” and an interceptor missile launcher, and its construction cost for one ship is estimated at approximately hundred millions U.S. Dollars.

In an attempt to avoid criticism from inside and outside the country and cover up its aggressive nature, Japan is arguing that it is exclusively for “interception.” But, it is too apparent that the ship could be converted for an offensive purpose at any moment and it is much more dangerous than the ground-based type in the aspect of operational range and mobility.

More serious is that Japan every time has been drawing up and pursuing such plans on the pretext of “threat” from neighboring countries.

Since the late 1990s of last century, Japan revised the “Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation Guiding Principle” and has been speeding up the legal readjustment to become a military power and send troops overseas under the pretext of “emergency situation around Japan” such as “emergency on the Korean peninsula” and “emergency in Taiwan Strait.” It has also been continuing to modernize “Self-Defense Forces” and reorganize gradually their deployment and structure from self-defensive mode into an attack-oriented one.

In particular, after the inauguration of second Abe regime in 2012, the military capability of Japan obsessed with a wild ambition for military power has far crossed the line where Japan could now be able to perform a full-scale war.

A typical example is that Abe regime changed the interpretation of the constitution and created a leverage for exercising the “right to collective self-defense” in 2014, and adopted the Security Law in 2015 and thereby established a legal framework to intervene in a war between other countries in any part of the world, “total defense”, a Japanese habitual utterance, now reducing into a nominal wording.

And Japan abolished the “three principles of weapon export”, which had prohibited export of weapons in principle and provided the “three principles of defense equipment transfer” in 2014 and thus paved the way for overseas export of defense equipment as well as joint development.

Recently, taking advantage of the withdrawal of “Aegis Ashore” deployment plan, Japan is getting down to an across-the-board discussion on a new security strategy which would include a possession of “capability to attack enemy base” under the pretext of shifts in its surrounding security environment.

There’s a saying: “Gangster shouts ‘stop the gangster!”

Japan is hell-bent on reviving militarism with a wild ambition to “reign” over the region once again, far from liquidating its unprecedented crime committed against the peoples of Asian countries in the past century. It is the height of shamelessness and absurdity that Japan, a war criminal state, dares to mouth “threat” from neighboring countries.

All the above developments attest to the fact that Japan is emerging once again as a dangerous aggression force detrimental to peace and stability of the region, much the same it did a century ago.

Those who like playing with fire are destined to be burnt to death. Likewise, those who are hell-bent on aggression and war will only end in miserable fate.

Japan should not forget the lessons of history.

Kim Sol Hwa

Researcher of Institute for Studies of Japan

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea