KCNA Commentary Terms Japan's Space Plan Risky

Pyongyang, July 17 (KCNA) -- There took place a ministerial conference in Japan recently to map out a new basic space plan.

The plan is to double the scale of the space-related industrial market of Japan until the early 2030s and encourage businesses to compete in the market.

What can not be overlooked are Japan's claim that it has updated its space policy because of mounting threat from the DPRK and China, and its announcement that it would improve its space defense and missile detecting and tracking capabilities in cooperation with the U.S.

The plan also calls for possessing many information-gathering spy satellites capable of rapidly detecting missiles from the DPRK. And this has come under the global spotlight.

In a word, the new plan is an open scenario for turning Japan into a military power at any cost by pushing forward with space weaponization, and it is also an extremely dangerous aggression plan for making outer space a war theatre.

Japan has pushed ahead with space weaponization in secrecy for a long time under the pretext of defending itself from someone's threat.

By enacting the "basic law on space" in 2008, Japan threw away the pretext of the "peaceful use of the outer space" and paved a road toward space weaponization. In its revised "defense guidelines" and "Midterm Defence Capability Buildup Outline" in 2018, it declared outer space and cyber space as its new spheres of defense.

The Japanese reactionaries' space weaponization has entered a more serious stage this year.

At the beginning of this year it examined the issue of renaming the Air "Self-Defense Force" the Aerospace "Self-Defense Force." In February it launched an intelligence satellite for gathering information about DPRK's missile facilities. In May it organized a "space operation force," the first of its kind, in its Air "Self-Defense Force".

Abe declared that it is the general goal of Japan to be a "future independent space power", thus openly betraying the black-hearted intention to seize military edge in outer space.

Quoting him, AP said that Abe is seeking to enhance "Japan's roles and capability worldwide" by intensifying the cooperation between its "Self-Defense Forces" (SDF) and the U.S. forces and by equipping the SDF with U.S.-made weapons.

The Japan's "space operation force" is now closely cooperating with the U.S. space force in developing the technology for neutralizing and destroying satellites of other countries.

Not content with having turned the SDF into offensive forces to provoke the international community, Japan, a war criminal country deprived of the rights to possess the army and participate in war and the right of belligerency, included outer space and cyber space in the operational zones of the SDF. It even encourages individual companies to compete in the space industry market in order to monopolize it, a revelation of its long-cherished extremely dangerous ambition to reinvade Korea and its boundless greed.

We can not overlook Japan's desperate moves for hastening space weaponization and becoming a military power, which are all aimed to realizing the old dream for the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". -0