Pyongyang, February 11 (KCNA) -- Japan keeps provocation to meet its aim of holding Tok Island.

The Japan foreign minister calling Tok Island "territory of Japan" in his recent speech on diplomatic affairs for new year in Diet, re-iterated his intent to "keep tackling the insistence".

This official indication of Japan's plan to openly tackle the task, with it set as key policy orientation for this year, is a blatant challenge and serious act of aggression against the dignity and sovereignty of the Korean nation.

Absolutely enraging the entire Korean nation is the gangster-like act of the Japanese reactionaries who, flatly denying the past crimes pending prompt liquidation, only makes far-fetched assertion that the land of Korea belongs to them.

Japan's persistent attachment to Tok Island issue betrays its never-ending ambition for territorial expansion and its brazen-facedness that has reached the extremes.

It is illogical and something intolerable for Japan to go arrogant to raise the Tok Island issue, today when exclusively heightened atmosphere for reunification is witnessed among the Korean nation, renowned for having lived long as a homogeneous nation on one and the same territory.

Tok Island is inalienable part of Korea both in name and reality.

Even key historical data and maps of Japan, to say nothing of all historical documents of Korea, specify Tok Island as Korea's. None of them found to have marked the islet as Japan's.

Currently on increase are disclosure of historical data and materials proving that Japan did not recognize Tok Island as its land.

This notwithstanding, Japan insists on its dominium over "Tok Island", not because of its ignorance of international law or misunderstanding of historical facts. This is a vivid expression of its militarist ambition to justify past aggression acts that drenched the vast Asian continent in blood and realize its old dream of the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere".

Clear is the aim sought by Japan in going mad to hold control of Tok Island.

By holding the islet, geographic and strategic linchpin rich in natural resources, Japan designs to monopolize economic interests in the region and turn it into a military base for serving its overseas expansion ambition.

What it also has in mind is to make the islet topic of international disputes and take the issue to the International Tribunal Court.

By doing so, it wants to create plausible excuses and long-term guarantee for constitutional revision and military giant move.

If the Japanese reactionaries keep going reckless for overseas territorial expansion, defying repeated protest and rejection by the DPRK and other countries around it, they will face earlier isolation and self-ruin.

Tok Island is an inseparable part of Korea's territory forever. -0-