The US military is behind Japanese militarism

△ [5/30, embassy of Japan in Korea] We held a press interview in which we urged the US military is behind Japanese militarism.

On 14 May this year, the upper house of the Japanese Diet passed the National Referendum Bill, including procedures for revising the peace constitution, which takes as its principal theme the 'renunciation of war and the prohibition against the maintenance of armed forces'. And on the 18th, the Japanese government initiated a full-scale examination of whether, from the viewpoint of constitutional interpretation, Japan can exercise the prohibited right to collective self-defence. Abe's regime has made amending the constitution the goal of his term of office. If the government's programme makes progress according to their plan, a situation may develop within a few years in which the last obstacle is removed to Japan's emergence as a great military power.
The movement to amend the constitution, backed by the power of Japanese militarism, may touch off an arms race in northeast Asia. Not only will it hinder the construction of a cooperative security system in the region, it will definitely endanger peace on the Korean peninsula and in northeast Asia. We absolutely cannot permit this to happen.

Above all, we strongly denounce the revision of the peace constitution as an action that may set off an arms race in northeast Asia, thus intensifying the Cold-War type of confrontation in northeast Asia, and will definitely menace peace on the Korean peninsula and in northeast Asia.

From now on, we definitely cannot look on idly as they revise the peace constitution and Japanese militarism is strengthened, taking the Korean peninsula and North Korea as its first targets.

From now on, we must keep a watchful eye on the Abe regime's constitutional revision project and the interpretation of the peace constitution, which definitely promote the overseas dispatch of the Self-Defence Forces throughout the world and strengthen the US-Japanese alliance.