Associated Press photo
This article originally appeared on VICE News.Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to wield "stronger pressure" against North Korea after his ruling coalition scored a sweeping victory in Sunday's election.Abe said Monday he would confront Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions with "strong, resolute diplomacy," pledging to work closely with the US and other world powers."I will make sure the Japanese public is safe, and safeguard our nation," he continued, promising to "dramatically show countermeasures against the North Korea threat."Pyongyang responded to the result with a statement published in state media Monday accusing "Japanese reactionaries" of working to "pave the groundwork for a reinvasion of the Korean peninsula."Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party coalition with the Komeito party won 313 of the 465 seats in Japan's lower house of parliament Sunday.The result validated his gamble to call an early election, seeking a fresh mandate to tackle crises facing the country – most pressingly, North Korea's accelerating nuclear weapons program.Support for Abe, a conservative who has been in power since 2012, surged after North Korea fired missiles over Japan last month.The result gives the ruling coalition the two-thirds majority required to push through Abe's long-held goal of rewriting the country's pacifist constitution. Abe has said he hopes to revise article 9, which outlaws war, by 2020. But in comments Monday he appeared to back away from the deadline, saying the target was "not set in a concrete schedule."About 80 percent of lawmakers in the new parliament support changing the constitution, but public opinion is divided. A recent survey by broadcaster NHK showed 32 percent of respondents in favor, 21 percent opposed, and 39 percent unsure.US President Donald Trump will visit Japan during his tour of Asia next month.
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