We Are Tomodachi Winter 2016

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16North Korea as a threat to peaceNorth Korea has now manifested itself directly before us as an open threat to peace. The raison d’être of the United Nations is now truly being tested.North Korea launched SLBMs. Immediately after that it fired three ballistic missiles simultaneously, each traversing 1,000 kilometers to reach Japan’s exclusive economic zone. This year alone, North Korea has launched a total of 21 ballistic missiles. In addition, it claims to have successfully detonated a nuclear warhead in a test on September 9. That nuclear test followed another test conducted this past January. This series of launches of missiles and a detonation of a warhead does change the landscape completely.We must therefore respond to this in a manner entirely distinct from our responses thus far. We must concentrate our strengths and thwart North Korea’s plans.It is the United Nations’ turn on the stage. Now is the time for the Security Council to indicate an unmistakable attitude towards this threat of a new dimension.Leading Security Council discussionsIt was only four months ago that President Obama visited Hiroshima, where countless innocent citizens fell victim to the first atomic bomb ever detonated.It was a day on which we renewed pledges. However much time it may take, we must never, even for the briefest moment, let up in our efforts towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Our pledges on that day linked both sides of the Pacific and gained new strength.Despite this, North Korea is now escalating its provocations. The threat to peace now manifest before us, and the nature of the military provocation North Korea has persisted with, are substantially more serious than before.And the country carrying this out is a country that abducted a large number of Japanese, including a girl aged 13 at the time. We are demanding that North Korea return them immediately, but they have not agreed upon doing that and deprived them of their peaceful lives and [are] not allowing them to return to their homeland even now.It is a country that tramples human rights, where no heed whatsoever is paid to restraints on or balances of power. It is a country pushing ahead with a buildup of arms including nuclear weapons and missiles while paying no attention to the plight of its citizens.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.This December, Japan will mark the 60th anniversary of its accession to the United Nations. Sixty years ago, what the Japanese who had attained a seat in this distinguished Excerpt from the Address by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Delivered in New York, September 21, 2016The Seventy-First Session of the United Nations General Assemblyfull text: http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201609/71unga.html

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