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Japan military budget grows for seventh year in face of North Korean threat

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Japan looks set to beef up its military budget for the seventh year in a row under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the face of a rising threat from North Korea and an expanding China.
Tokyo said the growing defense spending was necessary to cope with an increasingly severe security environment, highlighting North Korea and China specifically in its defense paper published separately on Tuesday and titled „Defense of Japan 2018.“
Japan’s defense budget still lags far behind that of close ally the United States, which requested $686 billion for 2019, and neighbor China, which increased spending 8.1% to $175 billion in 2018.
Abe was re-elected as Prime Minister in 2017 on a promise to take a tough approach to Pyongyang, which at the time was in the middle of a heated war of words with the United States.
While diplomatic relations with North Korea have warmed internationally since then, off the back of two summits in the first half of 2018, Japan doesn’t appear to be taking any chances.
„Military trends in North Korea pose an unprecedentedly serious and imminent threat to Japan’s security, and significantly damage the peace and security of the region and the international community,“ Tuesday’s defense paper said.

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