North Korea's media castigated Japan for inciting "hostility" toward its regime Tuesday, calling on Tokyo to "liquidate" its colonial-era crimes if it really wants peace and stability in the region.

In a commentary, the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, claimed that Japan is making a "pretext" to achieve its push to become a military power through such hostile policy despite a growing sense of peace surrounding the Korean Peninsula. 

"A dramatic event is happening on the Korean peninsula where the situation was driven into the verge of confrontation and war. Japan is very upset by this because the atmosphere of reconciliation and detente in the peninsula is throwing dark clouds over Japan seeking a war state," the newspaper said.

"The Abe group is inventing a pretext of achieving its ambition for military giant and reinvasion at any cost, desperately inciting hostility towards the DPRK," it added.

DPRK is the abbreviation of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"If Japan sincerely wants the peace and stability in the region, it should make a bold decision to liquidate the crimes committed by Japan against the Korean nation in the past and drop its dagger hidden behind its waist," it said, apparently referring to atrocities perpetrated during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

This appears to be in line with the North's recently ramped-up criticism of Japan, which calls for maintaining strong pressure and sanctions on Pyongyang until it makes good on its promised denuclearization. (Yonhap)