In the midst of advancing North Korean threats, trilateral security cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan took a more concrete shape over the weekend, as they fleshed out plans for the sharing of missile warning data and the resumption of maritime drills.
The Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum in Singapore, set the stage for Seoul, Tokyo and their shared ally, the United States, to deepen their security coordination amid renewed tensions over Pyongyang's failed yet defiant launch of a space rocket last week.
On its margins, Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Yasukazu Hamada, held a trilateral meeting on Saturday, which started with a firm three-way handshake along with their broad smiles -- a symbolic sign of their tightening unity against persistent North Korean threats.
Sunday's bilateral talks between Lee and Hamada boded well for three-way cooperation. They agreed to explore measures to prevent the recurrence of a disturbing dispute, involving their maritime operations years ago -- in a move to clear an obstacle to the two countries' defense cooperation.
In their tripartite talks, Lee, Austin and Hamada agreed to build and operate a system to share North Korean missile warning data in real time within the year -- in line with an agreement made at a summit that President Yoon Suk Yeol and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Joe Biden and Fumio Kishida, attended in Cambodia last November.
The envisioned system is expected to enable the three countries to share a missile's launch point, flight trajectory and expected point of impact. A system under the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is likely to serve as an intermediary for the three-way linkage.
South Korea is known to be better in gleaning information on the launch point due to its geographical proximity, while Japan is thought to be more accurate in its data on where a North Korean missile lands.
Currently, the real-time sharing of missile warning data takes place between the South Korean military and the U.S. Forces Korea, and between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. Forces Japan, while South Korea and Japan do not have a similar direct mechanism, given that they are not treaty allies.
"To thwart North Korea's nuclear threats, the move is a necessary step," Park Hwee-rhak, a professor of politics at Kookmin University, said of the efforts to share the data. "There needs to be multiple sources of information, not only from the U.S."
At the three-way talks, the trio also reaffirmed an agreement to swiftly resume maritime interdiction and anti-piracy exercises as agreed during working-level talks in April.
In a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Lee defended trilateral cooperation with the U.S. and Japan as "inevitable" in the face of growing North Korean threats.
"Strengthening the ROK-Japan and ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation is also an inevitable measure taken to protect regional freedom and peace from the advancing North Korean nuclear and missile threats," he said in a Saturday session, using the acronym of South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea.
Lee's comments highlighted Seoul's commitment to not only strengthen trilateral cooperation but to also bolster ties with Tokyo amid recent efforts to mend relations soured over long-running historical spats stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea.
Their ties have recently improved after Seoul's decision in March to compensate Korean victims of Japanese wartime forced labor on its own without asking for contributions from Japanese firms.
The Japanese defense chief also affirmed the need to step up cooperation with the South.
"The security environment is getting tougher and tougher in many directions so it's very important to have a good relationship with South Korea," Hamada said during a main session Saturday through an interpreter.
"We are in a trend of enhancing the relationship with them and we are striving for the prosperity and safety of the Indo-Pacific and we wish to enhance communication with South Korea," he said.
During their separate talks, Lee and Hamada agreed to devise measures to prevent the recurrence of a lingering dispute stemming from a 2018 maritime incident. The incident involved a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft having made an unusually low-altitude flyby over a South Korean warship.
Meanwhile, trilateral cooperation appears likely to continue to grow as Pyongyang has vowed to press ahead with more provocative acts.
A day after the North's botched launch, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, vowed that Pyongyang will "correctly" place the satellite into orbit soon, while shutting down the possibility of dialogue with Washington, citing its "hostile policy" against her country.
Nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have remained deadlocked since the 2019 Hanoi summit between then U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended without a deal.
Source: Yonhap News Agency