SEOUL, April 25. /TASS/. The expansion of AUKUS (security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US) and other "anti-China alliances" may turn the Asia-Pacific region into a "nuclear minefield," North Korean international affairs analyst Kang Jin Song said in an article published by the the Korean Central News Agency.
The expert pointed out that the US has recently stepped up its attempts to "expand and strengthen military blocs in the Asia-Pacific region." On April 8, the top defense officials of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States issued a statement saying that they were considering high-tech cooperation between AUKUS and Japan. According to Kang Jin Song, US President Joe Biden later "confirmed Japan's participation" in some aspects of AUKUS activities. Technical cooperation between Tokyo and the alliance will lead to Japan's full membership in it sooner or later, the analyst said.
"The danger of Japan's participation in AUKUS is making the whole international community tense, not to mention the regional countries," the expert pointed out. According to him, AUKUS was originally perceived as "the Anglo-Saxon nuclear submarine alliance" aimed at "seeking nuclear supremacy in the Asia-Pacific region by detouring the international nuclear non-proliferation system." Since its creation, AUKUS "has been called a nuclear mine planted in the waters of the Asia-Pacific," the analyst emphasized. But instead of Canada and New Zealand, AUKUS is first increasing its involvement with Japan, he noted.
Kang Jin Song also said that Japan "covertly beefed up its capability for manufacturing nuclear weapons" after World War II. Now Japan, "which revised the ‘Pacifist Constitution’," is "obsessed by nationalism," he pointed out.
According to the analyst, the "sinister intention" of the US is to "put Japan at the outpost line of the anti-China pressure" and "push the nuclear minefield in the Asia-Pacific region" closer to this country. "Owing to the establishment of a ‘small group’ of the US whose arch enemy is China and its ceaseless attempt to expand the group, the Asia-Pacific region, where opportunities and potentials for development are richer than any other region of the world, is turning into a theatre of muscle-flexing and a touch-and-go nuclear minefield," Kang Jin Song concluded. The author urged supporters of peace in the region and the world to be more vigilant about Washington's actions.