North criticizes Japan over joint fighter jet project with U.K. and Italy

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects nuclear materials facilities on Jan. 29 in this photo released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. [YONHAP]

 
North Korea slammed Japan for its joint next-generation fighter jet development project with the United Kingdom and Italy, calling Japan a “war criminal state dreaming of reviving its wartime alliance.”
 
Japan, the U.K. and Italy agreed in December 2022 to jointly develop next-generation fighter jets, with plans to deploy them before 2035.
 
 
In a commentary published on Monday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claimed that “militaristic” Japan is more “frantically engaged than ever” in colluding with foreign forces to forge a sword of reinvasion.
 
Japan’s strengthened military alignment with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — which the KNCA called “the largest war alliance and worst confrontation bloc in history” — as well as its old allies with whom it once signed a “blood alliance” to pursue “world division” is something we increasingly witness today, the paper said.
 
The commentary continued that ultimately, Japan’s pursuit of the fighter jet development project is not simply aimed at modernizing its armaments, but at “expanding a military bloc to create a favorable environment for future wars of aggression.”
 

A page from Japan’s 2025 defense white paper [JOONGANG PHOTO]

 
It warned that if Japan continues to “cling to military cooperation with outdated allies, blinded by ambitions to become ‘the leader of the East’ and failing to see the direction of the times,” it will only face a “fate of self-destruction.”
 
Previously, on Friday, KCNA also denounced Japan’s 2025 defense white paper, quoting a statement by a policy director at the Institute for Japan Studies under North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, who described it as “a war scenario for realizing its ambition for reinvasion.”
 
The North Korean statement accused Japan of being obsessed with its ambitions for reinvasion and preoccupied with securing pre-emptive strike capacities, saying that “Japan’s military modernization plot is rooted in an attempt to revive its past imperialism by restoring its ‘war alliance.’”
 
The statement also criticized Japan for describing the military buildups of North Korea, China and Russia in the white paper as “a grave and urgent threat,” arguing, “This is nothing but shameless sophism to cover up the threatening entity of Japan which is escalating the regional situation in a gradual way and justify its reckless moves to turn itself into a military giant, leaving the whole area of the archipelago as a military outpost and logistic base for realizing the U.S. hegemony-oriented strategy in the Indo-Pacific.”

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
BY HONG JOO-HEE [[email protected]]