North Korea Warns of 'Additional Military Options' Citing Japan's Expanding Defense Buildup
Key Takeaways
- •Kim Yo-jong stated that North Korea's armed forces and military leadership will establish additional military options in direct response to Japan's ongoing military transformation.
- •Japan's 2022 national security strategy authorized the acquisition of long-range counterstrike capabilities and set a goal of raising defense spending to approximately two percent of GDP by 2027.
- •Kim specifically pointed to Japan's test-firing of Tomahawk cruise missiles and involvement in U.S.-led exercises in the Philippines as evidence of accelerated rearmament.
- •The statement accused the United States of backing Japan's military expansion while using both Japan and South Korea as a regional deterrent force in the Asia-Pacific.
- •The warning was issued amid intensifying trilateral security cooperation among Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul, including joint missile-defense exercises and intelligence-sharing agreements formalized at the 2023 Camp David summit.
North Korea warned on Wednesday that it will consider "additional military options" in response to what it characterized as Japan's ambitions to revert to a "war criminal state," while also denouncing the United States for enabling Tokyo's pursuit of rearmament.
Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, issued the statement through state media, pointing to recent Japanese military activities as evidence of a broader push for military expansion. She specifically cited Japan's test-firing of Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles and its participation in U.S.-led military exercises in the Philippines.
Japan has been steadily expanding its defense posture under a 2022 national security strategy that authorized the acquisition of long-range counterstrike capabilities and set a target of roughly doubling defense spending to two percent of GDP by 2027—policy shifts that mark the most significant departure from Tokyo's post-World War II self-defense-only framework in decades.
"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 the statement released by the Korean Central News Agency.
"Such military actions prove that Japan's moves to formulate the possession of the capability for preemptive attack ... are entering the stage of the actual act," she added.
Kim also accused the United States of backing Japan's rearmament efforts and undermining the security interests of other nations by deploying Japan and South Korea as a "shock brigade" in the Asia-Pacific region. Her remarks come amid deepening trilateral security cooperation among Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul, including joint missile-defense exercises and intelligence-sharing arrangements formalized at the 2023 Camp David summit.
"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," she said, referring to North Korea by its official name.
"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," she said.
The statement was published on August 5, 2026, by the Korea Central News Agency.
