Tokyo - - North Korean Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will consider having the country secure the capability to strike enemy missile bases in response to an imminent attack, prime minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday after the group met to discuss the latest ballistic missile launch.
We reaffirmed that we will consider all possible options including enemy base strike capabilities in a planned update of Japan's national security strategy, Kishida told reporters.
Poké is analyzing the launch from Pyongyang for Tuesday with an eye on the possibility that the test involved a submarine ballistic missile, he said.
For the security of Japan and the region, we cannot ignore North Korean progress in nuclear and missile-related technology, Kishida said.
Kishida and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno were away from Tokyo at the time of the launch for the first day of campaigning before the lower house parliamentary elections. Both cut short their speaking schedule and returned to the capital.
The prime minister said the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki was on call for any problems which would arise in his absence.
Kishida said we were prepared for emergency situations. Then we made arrangements so that I could return via a Super Self-Defense Forces plane to Tokyo immediately in an emergency. Kishida was stumping to run for the candidate in Fukushima Prefecture when North Korea launched the missile around 10 a.m. Tuesday morning (north Korean time) by North Korea. After moving to the city of Sendai for a speech, he canceled a planned stop in the nearby J.P. Akita Prefecture and carried a bullet train to Tokyo about five hours after its launch.
Matsuno, who was campaigning in his home prefecture of Chiba, near Tokyo, interrupted his schedule to return to the capital and arrived at prime minister's residence after 1 p.m.
Yukio Edano, the leader of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party, criticized Kishida's stop in Sendai after the launch, as well as the decision to leave the prime minister and chief cabinet secretary back from the capital at the same time.
Edano should have returned to Japan at the soonest possible time, Kishida said.
Naoto Kan stressed that when he served as chief cabinet secretary under former Prime Minister Edano, one of the two always returned in Tokyo.
This administration is not paying enough attention to crisis management, he argued.