Japan PM demands world find ‘new means’ to stop N. Korea

TIL Desk/World/Tokyo-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday demanded that the world find a new way to halt the threat from North Korea after the long-sanctioned regime’s nuclear and missile tests. Abe, addressing the UN General Assembly, said that calculations about North Korea needed to change after its latest actions including the state’s test of what it said was a miniaturized nuclear bomb for a warhead.

“There is no alternative but to say that the threat has now reached a dimension altogether different from what has transpired until now,” Abe said. “The threat to the international community has become increasingly grave and all the more realistic. It demands a new means of addressing it, altogether different from what we applied until yesterday,” he said.

Abe did not spell out specific actions but said Japan would use its non-permanent seat on the Security Council to explore new options. The right-leaning leader first rose to power with tough talk on North Korea and has made revision of Japan’s US-imposed pacifist constitution his signature issue. But Japan has never fired a shot in anger since World War II and is constitutionally barred from offensive military operations.