Tokyo ? About 80 percent of Japanese respondents and 75 percent of U.S. respondents said North Korea is a military threat to their countries, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun-Gallup poll.

Asked which countries and regions are military threats, North Korea ranked top at 80 percent in Japan, followed by China at 55 percent and Russia at 39 percent.

In the United States, the Middle East was top at 78 percent, followed by North Korea at 75 percent. China was third at 44 percent.

The results indicate the United States as well as Japan feel North Korea – which conducted a nuclear test in October – poses a strong military threat.

The joint survey was conducted in mid-November in both Japan and the United States through telephone interviews after selecting at random telephone numbers of eligible voters – aged 20 years old or older in Japan and 18 years old or older in the United States – with multiple answers allowed. About 1,000 people replied in each survey.

Seventy-one percent of respondents in the United States said they were concerned nonnuclear countries such as Japan and South Korea might equip themselves with nuclear arms due to Pyongyang’s nuclear test.