Pyongyang threatens Japan with nuclear destruction for backing new sanctions
In an article released by state agency KCNA, Pyongyang responded to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's speech at the United Nations General Assembly last month, in which he called for "pressure, not dialogue" to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Kim Jong-un's regime accused Abe of "using the 'theory of crisis on the Korean peninsula'" for political purposes, and in particular to "facilitate Japan's militarization and at the same time strengthen inside unity and save the present rulers driven into a tight corner with corruption and irregularities."
The report added that the Japanese prime minister had already shown his "sinister political goal" with measures such as increasing defense costs and calling snap elections, scheduled for Oct. 22.
"Japan's rackets inciting the tension of the Korean peninsula is a suicidal deed that will bring nuclear clouds to the Japanese archipelago," it read.
"No one knows when the touch-and-go situation will lead to a nuclear war, but if so, the Japanese archipelago will be engulfed in flames in a moment," the article warned, stressing that if the Japanese people, "the first victim of nuclear disaster in the world, are offered in sacrifice owing to handful militarist reactionaries' political aim, it will be a tragedy of the century."
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have reached dangerously high levels in recent months over Pyongyang's ongoing nuclear weapons program.
After a series of missile launches this year, North Korea detonated a hydrogen bomb at a nuclear testing facility on Sep. 3, which prompted another round of UN sanctions and international condemnation.
The penalties imposed by the international community, supported by the United States, China, South Korea and Japan, and increasingly bellicose rhetoric from US President Donald Trump, have so far failed to ease the hostilities.