North Korea’s claim that Japan has breached a diplomatic “red line” by deepening security partnerships is less about Tokyo’s defence moves than about Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s decisive victory at the polls, analysts say, as a weaker mandate could have pushed her to negotiate with Pyongyang.
With a commanding majority secured in Sunday’s election, Takaichi now faces fewer domestic constraints as she signals plans to expand Japan’s defence cooperation with Western partners and potentially push ahead with constitutional revision.
North Korea has responded with unusually sharp rhetoric. In commentary published on Wednesday headlined “Plotting to expand military alliances aimed at perfecting war capabilities”, the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper argued that, as a former wartime aggressor, Japan was barred from possessing a military or forming security alliances.
The article also repeated Pyongyang’s frequently used line that Japan was planning to resurrect its empire on mainland Asia, accusing Tokyo of “creating an environment favourable to realising its ambitions of overseas invasion by strengthening military collusion with global powers”.
Further underlining Pyongyang’s hostility towards Takaichi’s conservative administration, another state-run media ran a feature on Tuesday about atrocities allegedly committed by Japanese invaders in the 1592 Imjin War. Korea Central News Agency’s article reiterated descriptions of “brigandish” Japanese carrying out “unethical crimes … so hideous that they can never be pardoned”.
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