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KCNA Pyongyang Times

Act harmful to regional peace and security

Date: 21/09/2022 | Source: Pyongyang Times | Read original version at source

These days Japan is scheming to drastically increase the military expenditure in 2023 on the pretext of coping with “threat” by neighbouring countries.

On August 31 the Ministry of Defence of Japan applied for an unprecedentedly huge defence budget.

According to a foreign news report, the budget does not include the expenses for missiles for preemptive strike and other weapons and if the expenses are included in it, the military expenditure for the 2023 fiscal year will rise up to ¥6.5 trillion, 20 per cent up from that of this year.

Experts say that if the draft budget is approved, it will be an extension of increased military expenditure that has been witnessed for the past ten consecutive years.

Japan’s arms buildup is a hazardous act instigating arms race in Northeast Asia and detrimental to peace and security in the region.

What cannot be overlooked is that Japan ascribes the “legitimacy” of the increase in the military expenditure to the alleged “threat” by neighbouring countries.

As a proverb goes, “A thief calls ‘Stop thief!’”

The “threat” Japan has consecutively talked about has not existed and the neighbouring countries actually regard immoral Japan as neither their rival nor a target of threat.

Nevertheless, Japan keeps talking about “threat”. This is nothing but a trick the Japanese authorities obsessed with the ambition for reinvasion uses to justify their arms buildup to the Japanese people.

Japan intends to spend the defence budget on remodelling 12-type ground-to-ship guided missiles into long-range cruise missiles and developing various ultra-modern strike weapons such as hypersonic glide missile and hypersonic cruise missile.

Experts comment that there is a strong possibility that the missiles target mainland China.

Japan’s arms buildup definitely runs counter to the principle of “exclusive defence” stipulated in the current Japanese constitution and reveals its evil intention to realize its ambition for overseas expansion without fail by further raising the strike power of the “Self-Defense Forces”.

Facts show that the Japanese reactionaries have continued to keep the ambition for reinvasion and wild dream of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” for decades since their defeat in WWII and got more undisguised in such bids.

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