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Japan’s new Foreign Minister, Taro Kono, said on Tuesday that international pressure against North Korea must be maintained until Pyongyang clearly demonstrates that it will give up its nuclear programme.

“It’s not the time to discuss (the resumption of) six-party talks,” Kono said, referring to international negotiations involving both Koreas, the U.S., Russia, China and Japan for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

“It’s time to exert pressure,” he said in an interview with a group of reporters.

Also the official media of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Tuesday that Japan is responsible for undermining the region’s security due to its re-militarisation and active participation in U.S.-led military maneuvers against Pyongyang.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a commentary that in its 2017 defence white paper published on Aug. 8, Japan Defence Ministry described the DPRK’s nuclear and missile development as a “serious threat to Japan.”

“The reckless action of Japan as a shock brigade of the U.S. pushing the situation of the Korean Peninsula to the worst crisis clearly reveals its sinister militarist scheme,” it said,

It cited recent joint drills between Japan and the U.S. in waters off the Korean Peninsula.

It said that after Japan’s half century of conquest in the Asia-Pacific region, it is now seeking “to stage a comeback to Korea and repeat its bloody past history.”

“Threats to security comes from nowhere but Japan, which is sharpening the sword of re-invasion, dreaming an old dream of realising the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,’’ the KCNA added.

It referred to it as an imperial term created by Japan to advance its colonialist ambitions in the region.

(Reuters/NAN)