Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the pilgrimages to Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japan's war dead -- including World War II leaders -- meant to Asian people an "act of reviving militarism."

"What is serious is that Japan is seized with its ambition for overseas expansion ... at a time when the United States is not hesitating to commit undisguised encroachment upon the sovereignty of weak and small countries under the pretext of 'anti-terrorism war', its strategy for world supremacy."

North Korea has accused the United States of preparing to launch a pre-emptive attack on the Stalinist state -- which allegedly admitted to possessing nuclear weapons -- after it led a war to disarm Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime.

On Tuesday, 74 Japanese lawmakers -- including Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Takeo Hiranuma -- visited Yasukuni in observance of a twice-yearly peace ceremony at the Shinto shrine.

Yasukuni has been seen by liberals at home and Asian neighbours as a symbol of Japan's wartime imperialism.

Pilgrimages there by top Japanese leaders, including prime ministers, have drawn protests particularly from China and the two Koreas, which were subject to Japanese occupation and colonial rule.

KCNA, monitored here, said: "The Korean people who had been subject to immeasurable misfortune and sufferings by the Japanese imperialists in the past are watching the moves for reviving Japanese militarism with a high degree of revolutionary vigilance and are fully ready to decisively repel this attack."

"Japan is well advised to cool its head heated with militarism, pondering over the grave consequences to be entailed by its ambition for reckless overseas expansion," the commentary added.

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