SEOUL– Diplomats of South Korea and the United States agreed to strengthen “comprehensive and systematic” cooperation on space security during their regular policy talks in Washington earlier this week, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.
Park Il, the ministry’s director general for nonproliferation and nuclear affairs, and Eric Desautels, a senior official at the State Department’s arms control, verification and compliance bureau, led the fourth Special Policy Dialogue on Tuesday.
“Marking the new space era, the two sides agreed to strengthen comprehensive and systematic cooperation related to space security at civilian, government and military levels between the two countries,” the ministry said in a press release.
They also discussed threats that undermine efforts to foster a safe, secure and sustainable space environment, and bilateral cooperation in special situational awareness — the capability to detect, track and identify objects in Earth orbit, which can cause collision risks.
The two sides agreed to hold the fifth session of the policy dialogue in Seoul next year.
The space cooperation dialogue was launched in January 2015 to discuss bilateral and multilateral cooperation in dealing with growing space security threats.
Source: Yonhap News Agency