SEOUL - The defense ministers of South Korea, the United States, and Japan are scheduled to meet in a trilateral session in Seoul this week. This meeting is part of ongoing efforts to enhance security cooperation in response to North Korea's missile and nuclear threats.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the meeting is being arranged to coincide with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin's visit to South Korea for annual bilateral defense talks with South Korea's new Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, set for Monday. Japan's Defense Minister Minoru Kihara, who assumed office in September, is also expected to participate. This session will be the first stand-alone defense ministerial meeting among these three nations.
The defense chiefs previously convened in June during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where discussions focused on North Korea. The upcoming meeting in Seoul is anticipated to further develop a real-time missile data sharing system, aimed at enhancing the detection and assessment of North Korea's missile launches. This initiative follows Pyongyang's speculated plans to launch a spy satellite later in the month.
At the Camp David summit in August, leaders from the three countries agreed to operationalize this information-sharing system by the end of the year. The Seoul meeting will likely cover topics including trilateral exercises, as the U.S. and its Asian allies have recently conducted their first joint aerial and maritime interdiction drills near the Korean Peninsula in seven years.