Kim Yo Jong Warns Japan Over First Tomahawk Missile Test

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, warned on August 5 that Pyongyang would set up additional military options against Japan. The statement followed the first live-fire test of a Tomahawk cruise missile by the Japanese navy. The missile was launched from the Aegis destroyer Chokai in the Pacific Ocean, on July 29. 

“Japan, a war criminal state, is accelerating its transformation into a war state, taking advantage of the acute and variable trend of the present international situation in which global geopolitical conflicts and inter-camp confrontation are getting fiercer,” Kim said in her statement, which was published by the North’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). 

She cited the test-firing of the U.S.-supplied Tomahawk missile by Japan, along with Tokyo’s participation in a U.S.-led joint military drill in the Philippines in May. Those moves prove that Japan’s push for preemptive strike capability has entered “the stage of the actual act,” according to Kim.

Japan’s pursuit of long-range strike weapons dates to December 2022 when Tokyo revised three key security documents to adopt what it calls “counterstrike capability,” a shift away from its decades-old policy of maintaining a strictly defensive military. The revision, described at the time as Japan’s biggest military buildup since World War II, opened the way for its purchase of 400 Tomahawk missiles from the United States, deliveries of which began this year.

Kim said that “Japan’s moves to formulate the possession of the capability for preemptive attack” were “contrary to international law and its constitution, which disallowed the possession of war potentials, the right to participate in a war and the right to belligerency.” She added: “The mass possession of different kinds of long-range strike means with an unexpectedness of preemptive attack and a drastic increase in the radius of their operation and their deployment of multi-demesne forward spaces for actual war, including sea, underwater and air, make Japan reorganize its overall armed forces as a formation of preemptive attack and overseas aggression.”

Japan has said its military buildup is necessitated by what Tokyo calls the “most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II.” Ironically, Japan claims its new capabilities are motivated in part by North Korea’s own actions. In its latest defense white paper, Japan’s Defense Ministry warned that “North Korea’s military activities pose an even more grave and imminent threat to Japan’s national security than ever before.”

For North Korea’s part, Kim said Tokyo has long postured as a “peace-loving state” while branding neighboring countries’ own defense measures as “threat” and “provocation.” She called that posture “a camouflaged tactic to cover up its ambition for a military giant.” While accusing Tokyo of building up its military capabilities to threaten her country, Kim also blamed Washington for enabling the test. 

“It is not a secret that the U.S. has handed over Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles to Japan, remodeled a warship to be used in its operation, and provided all conditions and environment for its test-fire including the place of launch,” Kim said.  “We will never remain a passive onlooker to the military evolution of Japan which may pose a grave threat to the security of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (the formal name of North Korea, often abbreviated as DPRK).

“I make it clear upon authorization that the armed forces of the DPRK and the military leadership will set up additional military options which are obviously due to Japan’s transformation of these days,” Kim said.

Kim did not disclose further details about the “additional military options” Pyongyang is planning.