N. Korea slams Japan's defense paper as justification for military buildup

North Korea harshly criticized Japan's latest defense white paper on Tuesday, accusing it of trying to legitimize the nation's military expansion and serving as a justification for starting a war. Kang Won-chol, a security analyst from North Korea, made these allegations in an article published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and the Rodong Sinmun, the country's most widely read newspaper.

He stated that the white paper was released at a time when Japan was aggressively pursuing militarization with the goal of reinvading the region. Kang argued that Japan arbitrarily labeled North Korea as a serious and impending threat in the white paper to rationalize its excessive military spending. He deemed it a tactic of turning black into white, as Japan incorporated the perceived threat from neighboring countries into the white paper despite its own actions of strengthening alliances with the U.S. and its allies following the declaration of that policy as a state objective to erase its historical misdeeds and attain its objective of becoming a military power.