Kim Sol Hwa, a researcher of the Institute for Japan Studies under the DPRK Foreign Ministry, issued the following article "A suicidal act of jumping into fire with brushwood":

Japan’s accelerated deployment of long-range missiles provokes the vigilance of the international community nowadays.

For typical examples, Japan secured the approval from the U.S. for the sale of 50 air-to-surface missiles for F-15 fighters in August last year and recently signed a contract with the U.S. to purchase Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles.

Japan is going to spend 169.4 billion yen to import 400 U.S.-made Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles and necessary equipment from 2025.

It seeks to purchase Norway-made cruise missiles for F-35A stealth fighters in 2026 or thereabouts. It also buckled down to extending the range of type 12 surface-to-ship guided missiles of the Ground "Self-Defense Force" from about 200 km at present to over 1 000 km and developing high-speed gliding projectiles and 3 000 km-range supersonic guided missiles as part of its efforts for starting the deployment of home-made long-range missiles next year, in particular.

All facts go to prove that Japan, which revised three security-related documents, including the "national security strategy," at the end of 2022 under the pretext of "neighborly threats" to formulate the possession of "counterattack capability", is working hard to realize it at any cost through the deployment of long-range missiles.

Japan plans to allocate 734 billion yen, which is nearly one tenth of the biggest-ever 2024 defense budget running up to 7.9496 trillion yen, for the purchase and development of long-range missiles. This clearly shows that Japan is desperately resorting to the possession of the capability for preemptive attack.

Japan often spreads the "rumor about neighborly threats." This is nothing but an artifice to accelerate the deployment of long-range missiles at any cost under that excuse and thus secure the capability for carrying out preemptive attacks at the depths of neighboring countries.

Far from making apologies and reparations for having inflicted untold calamities upon our country and other Asian nations in the last century, Japanese politicians openly and regularly visit the Yasukuni Shrine haunted by the specter of militarism. Japan’s pursuance of the capability for preemptive attack against this backdrop clearly proves that it remains utterly unchanged in its wild ambition for launching reinvasion.

What can never be overlooked is the fact that Japan’s dangerous moves for turning itself into a military giant are pursuant to the U.S. scenario for implementing its hegemonic strategy to make its vassal countries in the Asia-Pacific region stooges for proxy wars against the DPRK, China and Russia.

Japan, which is banned from possessing combat capabilities as a war criminal nation bereft of its right to belligerency and participation in war, and the U.S. that unhesitatingly freed that vassal nation from the said shackles in a bid to carry out its hegemonic strategy, have neither qualification nor justification to find fault with the just and legitimate measures of our state for bolstering self-defensive capabilities.

Japan even discarded its spurious veil of "pacific nation" and is getting hell-bent on securing long-range missiles targeting the neighboring countries, buoyed up by the U.S. zealous patronage and support. It has now emerged as the worst threat-posing country in the region.

Japan should be mindful that it will become a common target of the righteous regional community for its dogged efforts for realizing the old dream of "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" while zealously following the U.S. gripped by anachronistic ambition for hegemony and expansionist fantasy.

Japan’s deployment of long-range missiles is just a suicidal act of jumping into fire with brushwood on its back.

Rodong Sinmun