2024.1.19.

An "uncommon" group visit to the Yasukuni Shrine was witnessed at the outset of the new year in Japan haunted by the spectre of militarism.

Dozens of high-ranking officers affiliated to the "uniformed service group", including the deputy chief of staff of the Ground "Self-Defense Force" of Japan, flocked to the shrine to pay homage to the late top class war criminals.

Politicians in Japan have made ritual offerings and visits to the shrine on various occasions such as the spring and autumn ancestral rite days, deeming it a "tradition." This has provoked the international community’s censure and protest.

The "uniformed service group" highlighted their visit to the Shrine at the beginning of the year by holding a "solemn ritual" there, which is something unusual.

It is well known that a touch-and-go situation, in which an armed conflict may break out any moment, is prevailing on the Korean peninsula due to the U.S. and the south Korean puppet warmongers’ frantic moves.

Notably, Japan was busy doing harm to the security environment of the Korean peninsula and its vicinity last year, as evidenced by its confab with the U.S. and the puppet regime over the "annual tripartite military drills" against the DPRK and official activation of the "real-time missile warning information-sharing system".

The present SDF has been fully transformed into aggressor forces, whose military capabilities have gone far beyond the scope of "exclusive defense," backed by ever-increasing "defense cost" that hits an all-time high every year, purchase of ultra-modern offensive weapons and equipment and war drills under different codenames at home and abroad.

Against this backdrop, the top brass of the aggressor forces paid a group visit to the shrine, which is little short of declaring the will at home and abroad to rewrite the bloody history of aggression in the last century by "legitimizing" the deployment of armed forces on the Korean peninsula and overseas military activities for aggression through the triangular military cooperation with the U.S. and the puppet forces and make this year a "decisive year" for realizing their long-cherished ambition for reinvasion.

In other words, they "pledged" before the dead militarists to realize their wild ambition for reinvasion and the old dream of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" by dispatching SDF forces to the Korean peninsula to take advantage of the ever-escalating danger of war there.

But Japan should ponder about what rival it has leveled its dagger of reinvasion at, and remind itself of the fact that the rival is a just and independent military power hating injustice.

If Japan repeats its past history of aggression, its fate will fall into irretrievable disaster only.

Rodong Sinmun