North Korea denounced recent defense cooperation moves between South Korea and Japan, saying "the reckless game of military collusion played by enemy states before the eyes of a nuclear weapons state will only become a foolish, rash act that invites their own destruction."
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the statement on the 9th in a commentary titled "Perilous Military Collusion That Invites Self-Destruction," issued under the name of Kang Chol Su, a director at the Institute for Enemy State Studies. The commentary said, "Whether Japan and South Korea form a military alliance or do anything else, the absolutely irreversible dynamics of the Korean Peninsula established by the most powerful nuclear weapons state will never, ever change." The Institute for Enemy State Studies is believed to be a renamed version of the Fatherland Reunification Research Institute, formerly under the United Front Department.
Kang said recent instances of cooperation, including talks between the South Korean and Japanese defense ministers and a case in which the South Korean Air Force received refueling support from Japan's Self-Defense Forces, are aimed at a South Korea-Japan Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), adding that this "cannot be overlooked."
Regarding trilateral military cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan, Kang said, "This is clearly revealed in the fact that Japan and South Korea are unanimously advocating the 'importance of U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation,' deploying long-range missiles that far exceed their own defense domains, and attempting to acquire nuclear-powered submarines."
Kang stressed that "continuously expanding and strengthening nuclear forces and thoroughly exercising the status of a nuclear weapons state is the one and only way to proactively cope with the acutely and unpredictably changing international situation and to safeguard peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the region."
