Flashpoints | Security | East Asia

Kim Yo Jong Warns Japan Over First Tomahawk Missile Test

The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader said Japan’s preemptive attack capability is entering the “stage of the actual act.”

The Japanese destroyer Chokai fires a Tomahawk missile on July 29, 2026. It was Japan’s first live-fire test of a Tomahawk.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, warned on August 5 that Pyongyang would set up additional military options against Japan. The statement followed the first live-fire test of a Tomahawk cruise missile by the Japanese navy. The missile was launched from the Aegis destroyer Chokai in the Pacific Ocean, on July 29. 

“Japan, a war criminal state, is accelerating its transformation into a war state, taking advantage of the acute and variable trend of the present international situation in which global geopolitical conflicts and inter-camp confrontation are getting fiercer,” Kim said in her statement, which was published by the North’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). 

She cited the test-firing of the U.S.-supplied Tomahawk missile by Japan, along with Tokyo’s participation in a U.S.-led joint military drill in the Philippines in May. Those moves prove that Japan’s push for preemptive strike capability has entered “the stage of the actual act,” according to Kim.

Japan’s pursuit of long-range strike weapons dates to December 2022 when Tokyo revised three key security documents to adopt what it calls “counterstrike capability,” a shift away from its decades-old policy of maintaining a strictly defensive military. The revision, described at the time as Japan’s biggest military buildup since World War II, opened the way for its purchase of 400 Tomahawk missiles from the United States, deliveries of which began this year.

Kim said that “Japan’s moves to formulate the possession of the capability for preemptive attack” were “contrary to international law and its constitution, which disallowed the possession of war potentials, the right to participate in a war and the right to belligerency.” She added: “The mass possession of different kinds of long-range strike means with an unexpectedness of preemptive attack........

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