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Japanese fighter jets in the air: rearmament in Tokyo
Photo: Uncredited / dpa
Japan is introducing a new national security strategy, wants to double its defense budget and massively upgrade it.
Because the country feels more insecure in the face of the threat from North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons program and China's growing thirst for power.
Logically, North Korea does not like the Japanese rearmament - and is now threatening military reactions.
"Japan will soon discover with a shudder that it has made a clearly wrong and very dangerous decision," a spokesman for North Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement distributed by North Korea's state news agency KCNA.
The security environment in the region has changed fundamentally as a result of Japan's new security policy.
"Japan is bringing a serious security crisis to the Korean peninsula and the East Asian region," it says.
North Korea sees the move as a violation of the UN Charter and as a "serious challenge" to international peace.
"We make it clear once again that we have the right to take bold and decisive military action to protect our fundamental rights," the spokesman said.
Japan wants weapons for "counterstrike"
With the security doctrine, Japan, despite its pacifist post-war constitution, could disable enemy missile positions even before the missiles are fired.
To this end, Japan wants to acquire weapons for the »counterstrike«.
According to earlier reports, Japan is also considering purchasing cruise missiles from its protecting power, the United States.
Japan increasingly sees China's rearmament, missile tests and North Korea's nuclear program as a threat.
The government wants to double military spending in the next five years to around two percent of economic output, which corresponds to around $320 billion.
Japan's military budget would be the third largest in the world behind the United States and China.
The government sees the fact that the country wants to put itself in a position to disable missile positions on enemy territory in an emergency as an act of self-defense and therefore in line with the pacifist post-war constitution.
It is said that Japan does not want to become a military power.
North Korea recently carried out missile tests again and, according to its own statements, is driving the development of solid fuel technology for its missile program.
ptz/Reuters