North Korea threatens disaster after Japanese official discusses nuclear weapons

AFP | 2025-12-25

North Korea said on December 21 that Japan's nuclear ambitions "must be prevented at any cost", after a Tokyo official reportedly suggested the country should possess atomic weapons.

Pyongyang's reaction came after the unnamed official in the prime minister's office was quoted by Kyodo News on December 18 as saying: "I think we should possess nuclear weapons."

The official was reported to have been involved in devising Japan's security policy.

The Kyodo report also quoted the source as saying: "In the end, we can only rely on ourselves" when explaining the necessity.

Pyongyang said the remarks showed Tokyo was "openly revealing their ambition to possess nuclear weapons, going beyond the red line".

"Japan's attempt to go nuclear must be prevented at any cost as it will bring mankind a great disaster," the director of the Institute for Japan Studies under the North's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by official Korean Central News Agency on December 21.

"This is not a misstatement or a reckless assertion, but clearly reflects Japan's long-cherished ambition for nuclear weaponization," said the North Korean official, who was not named.

The official added that if Japan acquired nuclear weapons, "Asian countries will suffer a horrible nuclear disaster and mankind will face a great disaster".

The statement did not address Pyongyang's own nuclear program, which includes an atomic test first carried out in 2006 in violation of UN resolutions.

Nuclear-armed

North Korea is believed to possess dozens of nuclear warheads and has repeatedly vowed to keep them despite a raft of international sanctions, saying it needs them to deter perceived military threats from the United States and its allies.

In an address to the United Nations in September, Pyongyang's vice foreign minister Kim Son Gyong said his country would never surrender its nuclear weapons.

"We will never give up nuclear which is our state law, national policy and sovereign power as well as the right to existence. Under any circumstances, we will never walk away from this position," he said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has also said he is open to talks with Washington, provided Pyongyang is allowed to keep its nuclear arsenal.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang has significantly increased missile testing in recent years, which analysts say is aimed at improving precision strike capabilities, challenging the United States as well as South Korea and testing weapons before potentially exporting them to Russia.

North Korea in November fired an unidentified ballistic missile towards the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The missile launched from an area north of Pyongyang and flew around 700km (435 miles), South Korea's military said.