Japan to boost military for ‘new level of threat’ from North Korea

• By rowan callick

  Contributor
• 12:00AM August 9, 2017
• Comments

The Defence Ministry made the Pyongyang threat a top priority yesterday, hours after North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said his country “is ready to teach the US a severe lesson with its nuclear strategic force”.

Mr Ri said North Korea would “under no circumstances” negotiate on its nuclear and missile weapons programs, despite the UN Security Council passing its strongest package of sanctions to force Pyongyang back to talks.

Japan is only 1000km from North Korea, which has carried out 14 missile tests this year, with most of the rockets landing in the Sea of Japan, within Tokyo’s ­exclusive economic zone.

Tokyo’s 532-page defence report was published after being held back for a fortnight until new Defence Minister, Itsunori Onodera, was in place. It has already been approved by cabinet.

Mr Onodera described the danger from North Korea as “significant and imminent”.

The report said it was possible that “North Korea has already achieved the miniaturisation of nuclear weapons and has ­acquired nuclear warheads”.

Pyongyang’s capacity to fire intercontinental ballistic missiles to much of the US intensifies the danger for Japan. It heightens the risk of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea dragging Japan into the conflict. Tokyo is second in Pyongyang’s firing line — after Seoul.

Mr Onodera, who led a study by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that called for a boost to missile response capability, said: “North Korea’s missile launches have escalated tensions both in terms of quality and quantity.”

He wants to review, in the light of his March study and of the new defence report, “if our current missile defence is sufficient just with the Aegis destroyers and (surface-to-air) PAC 3 (missiles)”.

Japan’s Defence Ministry is finalising orders for upgraded ship-to-air interceptors SM-3 Block IIAs, and mobile Pac-3 MSEs, doubling the coverage of the country’s defences.

But Japanese cities have started to stage evacuation drills in preparation for a missile attack, and private sales of nuclear shelters are booming.

Before becoming Defence Minister Mr Onodera said Japan should consider developing the capacity to attack North Korea’s strategic bases.

The defence report also expressed concerns about China’s increasingly pro-active navy and airforce presence in Japan’s region, saying Beijing’s defence budget had tripled in the last decade.

Mr Onodera criticised “China’s continued threatening behaviour in the East China Sea and South China Sea”.

But Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed on Monday that his country would pay the biggest price for implementing the new UN sanctions against North Korea. China accounts for 90 per cent of North Korea’s total trade.

The flagship newspaper of China’s ruling communist party, People’s Daily, said: “Sanctions must avoid to the greatest possible extent causing negative impacts to ordinary people and to third countries.” It added: “Aiming the blow precisely is an essential ­element of sanctions.”

The North Korean news ­agency KCNA issued a statement celebrating that “the world is seething over the continuous successes of the test launches of the ICBM Hwasong-14”.

It said “voices praising respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un as a peerlessly great man are being heard from different parts of the world as he struck terror into the US, changing the world’s political structure through the two successful test launches.”