North Korea criticized a recent agreement by Japan and the United States on co-producing air-to-air missiles as aggravating regional security risks and another example of Washington’s push to militarize Japan, state media said on Wednesday.
At a time when the United States is upgrading its milit command in Japan, the two countries’ cooperation in munitions production clearly has milit and aggressive intentions aimed at countries in the region, KCNA state news agency said.
The comments were attributed to an unnamed vice general director of the North’s defense ministry and did not name specific countries.
But the official referred to the AIM-120 air-to-air missile system that the United States and Japan have agreed to accelerate co-producing during U.S. Defense Secret Pete Hegseth’s visit to Tokyo on Sunday.
Advancing the deployment of such a weapon used by aircraft involved in frequent milit drills in the region that already pose a grave security threat adds a “new element of strategic instability to the Asia-Pacific region,” the official said.
“Certainly, the center of gravity of the U.S. hegemony-oriented milit security strategy is changing and it is a new warning signal for the Asia-Pacific regional society including the countries in Northeast Asia,” the official said.
The agreement comes as “the U.S. has connived at and encouraged Japan’s moves for a milit giant since last century,” the official said.
In Tokyo, Hegseth and his Japanese counterpart agreed to accelerate a plan to jointly produce beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles and to consider co-producing other surface-to-air missiles.
Hegseth stressed the importance of Japan’s role in deterring China including Beijing’s threat across the Taiwan Strait, calling it a “cornerstone” of security in the region.
Such a positive recognition of Japan by Hegseth was in contrast with his criticism against European allies and U.S. President Donald Trump’s complaint that Tokyo has not done enough to support the presence of U.S. milit in the country.
It is a priority for North Korea to counter growing instability by bolstering its milit deterrence, the Defense Ministry official said, without elaborating.
