Today's News

Kim Ryo Won, an international security analyst of the DPRK, on June 3 posted the following article "Japan's expansion of arms export is a dangerous act fully revealing the true colours of a war merchant":

Taking advantage of the present unstable international situation in which armed conflicts are frequent in different parts of the planet due to the US arbitrary practices and tyranny, Japan is going beyond the red-line in its frantic moves to free itself from the political and military fetters of the defeated nation and realize its ambition for reinvasion.

Its latest example is Japan's amending in April of the "three principles of defense equipment transfer" and its operation guidelines, which had restricted the arms export just for form's sake, despite concern and strong opposition at home and abroad. And Japan is now keen on expanding arms export while justifying it.

Days ago, the present chief executive of Japan justified the criminal nature of the amendments to the "three principles of defense equipment transfer" by asserting that the essential point is that it makes it possible to increase the deterrent for defense and prevent disputes in advance in the severest security environment after the war.

Japan, a war criminal state, revised its policy of arms export, talking about a "dramatic turn in its security policy". This is by no means a matter to be overlooked in view of its intention and purpose.

It is well known that Japan, which is banned by international law and its own constitution from possessing the right to belligerency, the right to participate in a war and the war potentials, has removed the institutional obstacles one by one tactfully to export weapons, not content with its frantic development of offensive weapons and equipment.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Japan put forward the "three principles of arms export" and "all-round expansion of the principle of banning arms export" as the signboard of a "pacifist state", but behind the scenes it achieved its own purposes.

It is an open secret that the parts of various kinds of lethal weapons used in the sites for wars of aggression, big or small, launched by the US to realize its hegemony-seeking strategy, including the Gulf war and the war in Yugoslavia, were marked with the stamps of Japanese munitions monopolies.

In 2014, the then Abe cabinet abolished the "three principles of arms export", a hindrance to the realization of its goal to become a military giant. And it cooked up the so-called "three principles of defense equipment transfer" whose keynote is to allow the export of lethal weapons to those countries taking part in the co-development of weapons and equipment and the export of equipment for non-combatant purposes such as "disaster relief, transportation, guard, surveillance and mine-clearing" to other countries.

In 2023, Japan amended the principles and sold its home-made Patriot missiles to the US under the permission of its enterprises. In such a roundabout way, Japan sent a lot of lethal weapons to the Ukrainian battlefield.

Not content with this, Japan completely removed the restrictions on the export of weapons and equipment this time and added an exceptional clause that allows it not to observe the principle of banning arms exports to a party in a conflict under "the special circumstances". By doing so, Japan opened up a legitimate way to unrestrictedly sell all kinds of lethal weapons to any conflict zone in the world.

Accordingly, it is busy exporting all kinds of lethal weapons, including escort ships, submarines and missiles, through frequent arms sales negotiations with its so-called like-minded countries.

The world people still remember the criminal act committed by Japan which got a windfall through the supply of vast quantities of munitions as a logistic base of the US during the Korean war in the 1950s and embarked on the road of reviving militarism with it as an asset.

Japan's expansion of arms export is a dangerous act fully revealing its true colours as a war merchant intended to expand the munitions industry and realize its ambition to be a major military power at any cost through the selling of a large number of deadly weapons.

And Japan seeks to accelerate the preparations for reinvasion by worsening geopolitical conflicts in the hot spots of the world and making much money through the bloodshed. Herein lie the injustice and dangerousness of Japan's arms export expansion.

Japan once resorted to political and military provocations against a neighbouring country, suggesting its intervention in "Taiwan contingency", and it is now developing into a war state by finding a market for selling various lethal weapons. So, Japan's destination is quite self-evident.

The international community should thoroughly check and frustrate the ever-increasing moves of Japan, a war criminal state, to become a military giant as it has completely discarded even the veil of a "pacifist state", obsessed with its ambition for reinvasion, and seriously threatens global peace and security.