Senior military officials of Korea and the United States will meet this week to prepare for next month's defense ministerial meeting, which will focus on major alliance issues and North Korea, Seoul's defense ministry said Tuesday.
The Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) is an overarching structure that includes a series of alliance-related meetings such as the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee, the Strategic Alliance 2015 Working Group and the Security Policy Initiative. The two allies held the inaugural meeting in April in Washington.
During the two-day meeting that begins in Seoul on Wednesday, Lim Kwan-bin, South Korea's deputy defense minister for policy, will have talks with his U.S. counterparts, including David Helvey, the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, and Bradley Roberts, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, the ministry said.
Their meeting comes as the defense ministers of the two sides are expected to meet at the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) in late October to discuss ways to handle North Korea's nuclear program and major alliance issues as Seoul retakes wartime operational control of its troops from the U.S. in 2014.
The two Koreas remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice. About 28,500 U.S. soldiers are stationed here to deter against the North Korean threat. (Yonhap)