File photo provided by South Korea's Ministry of Defense on November 12, 2023 shows its Minister Shin Won-sik (L) and his American and Japanese counterparts Lloyd Austin (center) and Kinoru Kihara, respectively, at trilateral dialogues. Shin and Austin met in Seoul, while Kihara joined the meeting virtually. (Resale and archiving prohibited)
SEOUL, Dec. 19 (Yonhap) — South Korea, the United States and Japan on Tuesday launched a system for sharing real-time warning data against North Korean missiles to strengthen trilateral security cooperation against North Korea, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.
The three sides also jointly drafted a multi-year plan for trilateral military exercises, agreed upon by their defense chiefs at a trilateral meeting in November, to better counter North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threat.
“The three countries have established the system to detect and evaluate missiles fired by North Korea in real time to ensure the safety of their citizens and improve related capabilities,” the ministry said in a statement.
The system's launch came just a day after North Korea reportedly fired a Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), marking the regime's fifth intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch. North Korea's State Affairs Committee chairman Kim Jong-un said the launch showed the decision the North would make “if Washington makes a wrong decision.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had agreed to share real-time missile warning data in a joint statement in November last year during their summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
In August this year, at their summit in Camp David, USA, the three leaders reaffirmed their efforts and agreed to implement the system by the end of the year.
Because the U.S. has bilateral alliance treaties with both South Korea and Japan, it operates a data-sharing system with each ally, but there is no direct data link between the two Asian neighbors, which have long been at odds with the historical disputes that originated in the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula in the period 1910-1945.
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