Arab News Japan

TOKYO: North Korea has rejected the United States’ assertion that it is a “non-cooperative state on counter-terrorism” and has accused the US of “state terrorism.”

A spokesman for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Friday that termed the designation by the United States as “malicious.”

“The ‘counter-terrorism’ advocated by the United States is nothing more than a pretext to justify interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” the statement said. “The illegal and unjust hostile acts of the United States against sovereign nations, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, are the most serious political violence and, at the same time, terrorist acts on a national scale.”

The statement says North Korea opposes all forms of terrorism that threaten international peace and security and suggests that the US tries to improve relations with Pyongyang.

“The more the United States provokes us with unnecessary, ineffective and malicious actions, the more the irreconcilable hostility between the DPRK and the US will intensify.”

North accuses Japan of boosting military

In a separate commentary by Kim Ryo-won, the North accuses Japan of “moving to strengthen its military power day by day.”

It says Japan is planning to conduct a shipboard launch test of an electromagnetic cannon, an advanced weapon system that uses electromagnetic force to continuously fire shells at hypersonic speeds.

Kim says Japan’s military wants to use the electromagnetic cannon to launch pre-emptive attacks and to intercept hypersonic weapons launched by North Korea and “neighboring countries.” He adds that Japan is also buying Tomahawk cruise missiles and other missiles from the United States.

Japan, he says, wants to “realize its old ambition of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere at all costs.”

“If weapons of mass destruction were to be held again in the hands of Japan, a war criminal nation that stained the vast Asia-Pacific region with blood and brought unspeakable horrors of war to humanity in the 20th century, it is obvious what cruel calamities the planet will suffer in the future.”

Kim criticizes the idea raised by “a Japanese defense official” to treat the East China Sea, South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula as a single theater, which, he says, will create a military imbalance in the region.

“The reckless military buildup maneuvers of Japan, a war criminal nation that is turning the archipelago into a huge powder keg and foolishly attempting to fire on a nuclear-armed nation, will be a self-destructive act that will hurtle it towards a second defeat.”