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

North Korea strongly criticized Japan's recently released defense white paper, asserting that it serves as a justification for the nation's growing military expansion. The assessment was penned by Kang Won-chol, a security analyst for the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and the Rodong Sinmun, the country's most widely-read publication.

Kang claimed that the white paper emerged at a time when Japan was aggressively pursuing militarization, driven by a desire to invade once again. He maintained that Japan had unjustly labeled North Korea as a "serious and imminent threat" within the document to rationalize its "reckless" military expansion. According to Kang, Japan's inclusion of the threat from neighboring countries in the white paper was merely an attempt to turn black into white, as the nation had been intensifying its ties with the U.S. and its allies in an attempt to justify its past actions and achieve its goal of becoming a military powerhouse.