Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea would consider any decision by Japan to impose economic sanctions against it as a ``declaration of war,'' the communist nation's Foreign Ministry said today.

North Korea would ``react to the action by an effective physical method,'' the ministry said on the state-run Korean Central News Agency, without elaborating.

Japan last week said it may halt food aid to North Korea after genetic testing showed human remains the Pyongyang regime claims are those of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese abducted by its agents in 1977, are those of someone else. The findings prompted calls from some leading ruling party lawmakers, including Shinzo Abe, for sanctions against North Korea.

Japan will give North Korea one more chance to explain itself, Abe, a former secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, said this week.

Japanese lawmakers this year approved measures that allow the government to impose sanctions that include barring North Korean ships from Japanese ports and a halt to remittances to the communist country. Those money transfers by Korean residents in Japan are among North Korea's biggest sources of foreign currency.

The latest deterioration in relations comes after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi traveled to Pyongyang in May for a second time for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in a bid to revive stalled negotiations on establishing ties and reopen an investigation into the fate of kidnapped Japanese.

Food Aid

At that meeting, Koizumi pledged 250,000 tons of food aid and $10 million worth of other assistance. In return, North Korea promised to investigate the fate of 10 Japanese, including Yokota.

North Korea maintains eight of the 10 died either of natural causes or suicide and denied knowledge of the other two.

Five other abductees returned to Japan in 2002, while their family members came to Japan after Koizumi's trip to North Korea. Japan has said any decision to agree on formal ties, which would open the way for financial aid, depend on a satisfactory resolution of the abduction issue.

North Korea has suffered 10 years of food shortages and will need 500,000 metric tons of food aid next year to help feed more than a quarter of its 23.7 million people even after the best harvest in a decade, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program.

North Korea In December 2002 backed out of a 1994 agreement on nuclear development and expelled UN monitors safeguarding its stockpiles of plutonium, raising concern it might produce nuclear weapons. Japan, the U.S., South Korea, China and Russia have failed to persuade North Korea in three rounds of talks in Beijing to dismantle its nuclear program.

A fourth meeting scheduled in September was canceled and North Korea has since refused to talk further.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Kelly in Tokyo at tikelly@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 14, 2004 22:13 EST