Tokyo just changed Kim Jong Un’s nuclear calculus
Washington Examiner · RC · trust 33/100
North Korea’s perspective on Japan is shifting. On August 4, Kim Yo Jong, Vice Department Director of the Workers’ Party of Korea and sister to supreme leader Kim Jong Un , strongly criticized Japan’s military buildup, warning that Pyongyang could take “additional military steps” in response. What provoked North Korea was the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s test-firing of U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles and Tokyo’s moves to secure long-range strike capabilities.
North Korea characterized these actions as a shift beyond defensive military power, enabling pre-emptive strike capabilities and overseas military operations. Just two days later, on August 6, North Korea launched a missile toward the East Sea. While it cannot be definitively proven that this launch was a direct retaliation for Kim Yo Jong’s warning, the fact that military action followed immediately after the warning certainly warrants attention.
This narrows the question down to one: Is Japan North Korea’s next target? It is premature to draw such a conclusion right now. However, it is hard to deny that Japan’s weight in North Korea’s military strategy is changing compared to the past. Japan is not a new enemy to North Korea. Pyongyang has long designated Japan as a U.S. ally and a military threat surrounding the Korean Peninsula. Yet, recent changes differ from the past. Japan has actually begun strengthening its long-range strike capabilities.
Shaped by North Korea’s nuclear and missile advancements, alongside the military activities of China and Russia, Japan is altering its defense policy, and the concept of an exclusively defense-oriented policy is being reinterpreted under this new security environment. From Pyongyang’s standpoint, this is not a mere reinforcement of defense, but a process by which Japan is acquiring the capacity to launch direct attacks against it. In particular, long-range cruise missiles like the Tomahawk add yet another military variable that North Korea must calculate.
The problem is that this reaction is cyclical. Japan strengthens its defense posture, citing North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, and North Korea, in turn, perceives that buildup as a threat to itself, expanding its own military power. Even if no one desires a war , tensions inevitably rise this way. Furthermore, with the strengthening of trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo security cooperation, North Korea views this not merely as a bilateral issue with Japan, but as a unified security network.
Kim Yo Jong’s latest statement criticizing not only Japanese military expansion but also coordination between the United States and Japan can be read as a signal that Pyongyang is far more wary of the strategic cooperation with the U.S. looming behind Japan’s shifts.
Perhaps the question needs a slight reframing. It is not that North Korea is selecting Japan as a new enemy, but rather that Japan is emerging as a new, core variable in North Korea’s nuclear strategy. This distinction matters. Simply predicting whether North Korea will directly attack Japan is an entirely different issue from recognizing that Pyongyang has begun incorporating Japan’s military capabilities into its nuclear strategy calculations. In Japan as well, the North Korean issue is shifting from a focus primarily on abductions, nuclear weapons, and missiles into a core security factor directly impacting its own military strategy.
This is a particularly sensitive issue for South Korea . Seoul shares a direct border with North Korea while being allied with the U.S., and now trilateral security cooperation with Japan is deepening. From Pyongyang’s perspective, trilateral alignment can be perceived as a formidable pressure cooker, whereas for South Korea and Japan, the more advanced North Korea’s capabilities become, the more imperative their mutual cooperation becomes. The more we strengthen security cooperation, the more ammunition North Korea gets to justify its own military buildup; yet, abandoning cooperation because of threats is out of the question. Therefore, the key is not merely tracing who increased their military power first, but looking together at what each side fears and perceives as a threat.
Of course, North Korea’s threats — possessing nuclear weapons and persistently violating United Nations Security Council resolutions through ballistic missile development — cannot be weighed on the same scale as Japan’s defense enhancements, which unfold within this realistic threat perception. Yet, dismissing North Korea’s reactions as mere propaganda is equally dangerous. Understanding how Pyongyang interprets Japan’s long-range strike capabilities and how it intends to incorporate them into its strategy is vital to the security of the Korean Peninsula.
NORTH KOREA ISN’T WINNING WITH NUKES. IT’S WINNING WITH OUR BOREDOM
Japan is changing. North Korea is changing. And those changes are mutually stimulating one another. What we must pay attention to is not the simplistic question of whether North Korea will actually attack Japan. The more crucial question is: How far will we allow the vicious cycle of Japan’s military buildup and North Korea’s nuclear acceleration to provoke one another? Whether Japan will be North Korea’s next target remains to be seen. However, one thing is clear: The security issues of the Korean Peninsula are no longer confined to the two Koreas.
With the U.S., China , Russia, and now Japan stepping forward as active strategic actors, the security topography surrounding the peninsula is rapidly transforming. Perhaps the real question we should be asking is this: Is Japan really North Korea’s next target, or have we already entered the whirlpool of a new Northeast Asian arms race?
Park Joonhye is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics and Unification Studies from the University of North Korean Studies.
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