North Korea on Saturday accused Japan's ruling party of playing up the nuclear threat posed by Pyongyang to achieve a huge win in last weekend's general election.
The North's Korea-Asia-Pacific Peace Committee also criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for planning to ask U.S. President Donald Trump to ratchet up pressure on Pyongyang when he visits Tokyo early next month.
In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, the committee claimed that in campaigning ahead of the election on Oct. 22, Abe's Liberal Democratic Party "kicked up a hysteric anti-(Pyongyang) racket, noisily trumpeting about the story of nuclear threat from the north and solution to the abduction of Japanese."