N. KOREA: JAPAN ‘NO LONGER NEEDED TO EXIST’

A North Korean state agency said Thursday that Pyongyang should use nuclear weapons to “sink” Japan and turn the United States into “ashes and darkness” as the country stepped up its threatening rhetoric in reaction to new United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program.

“The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche. Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said in a statement published by the North’s KCNA news agency.

The Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee is the North’s official propaganda arm and is also notionally responsible for managing ties with international partners. Juche, which translates as “self-reliance,” is Pyongyang’s ruling ideology. It’s a blend of Marxism and hypernationalism and is the brainchild of leader Kim Jong Un’s late grandfather, Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first president who led the country until his death in 1994.