North Korea warned yesterday that it would regard any sanctions imposed on it by Japan as a declaration of war and would hit back with an "effective physical" response.
It also said it would reconsider its participation in six-nation talks aimed at ending the nuclear stand-off if a "provocative campaign" under way in Japan against the country continued, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The outburst came after Japan said it would halt aid shipments to the impoverished Stalinist state in a dispute over the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents during the Cold War.
It also came amid efforts to jump-start stalled talks on the nuclear stand-off three months after Pyongyang failed to show for a scheduled fourth round.
"If sanctions are applied against the DPRK [North Korea] ..., we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method," the unidentified spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Japan swiftly shrugged off the North Korean warning, with Prime Min-ister Junichiro Koizumi suggesting the threat of an "effective physical" response might be part of a political strategy by Pyongyang.
"We have to look carefully at what their true intentions are," Koizumi said in Tokyo.
More than two-thirds of Japanese support sanctions against the Stalinist state, according to a newspaper poll, to punish Pyongyang for falsely claiming that human remains it passed to Japan belonged to two Japanese abductees.
One of those kidnapped to train spies in Japanese language and culture was Megumi Yokota, abducted in 1977 as a 13-year-old schoolgirl.
Tokyo announced last week that DNA tests showed ashes handed to a Japanese delegation last month did not, as Pyongyang claimed, belong to Yokota.
The finding reignited anger in Japan against North Korea and Tokyo froze shipments of food aid to the destitute country.
A Japanese official said on Tuesday that the US had warned Japan to be cautious about imposing sanctions on North Korea because the unpredictable regime could "out-manoeuvre" such a move.
Seoul feared that sanctions could derail efforts to end the nuclear standoff.
"The stance of our government is that peaceful dialogue rather than sanctions or a blockade will do more to draw North Korea into the dialogue table," Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said.
The North Korean foreign-ministry statement accused Japan of doctoring the DNA test for political reasons and insisted that the human remains were those of Yokota.
They had been handed to Japanese authorities by Yokota's husband and it was "unimaginable" he would give them the ashes of anyone else, the spokesman said.
Instead, elements in Japan were trying to revive a long-standing row over the abductions "because they needed a subterfuge to justify Japan's militarization, hold in check any improvement in the bilateral relations and step up their political and military interference in regional issues," he said.
He accused the US of supporting this because it wanted to provoke a war on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has returned five kidnap victims to Japan after admitting in 2002 to the abductions in return for an aid package and talks on normalizing relations.
But the families of eight other abductees whom Pyongyang claims are dead believe they are still alive and being detained in North Korea because they know too much about the secretive regime.
The talks aimed at persuading North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons drive have stalled after three rounds since Pyongyang boycotted a fourth session planned for September.
Besides Japan and North Korea, the negotiations involve South Korea, China, Russia and the US.
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS