Foreign minister stresses cooperation with Japan to thwart North Korean threats

Foreign Minister Park Jin, left, shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a joint press conference following their meeting at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Monday (local time). Reuters-Yonhap

Top diplomats urge North Korea to refrain from staging provocations

By Kang Seung-woo

Foreign Minister Park Jin has hinted that South Korea will take action to get its security cooperation with Japan back on track, as the new South Korean government is looking to mend ties with the neighboring country.

His gesture also comes as speculation is mounting that President Yoon Suk-yeol may hold a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Spain on the sidelines of the NATO leaders' meeting scheduled for June 29 and 30.

In addition, Korea's defense minister also highlighted a plan earlier this week to boost defense cooperation with Japan.

Park himself is expected to travel to Japan in the near future for talks with his Japanese counterpart, Yoshimasa Hayashi, as well.

With regard to the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) signed between Korea and Japan in 2016, Park said, "We want GSOMIA to be normalized as soon as possible together with the improvement of the Korea-Japan relationship," during a joint press conference following his meeting with U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken in Washington, D.C., Monday (local time).

The Park-Blinken meeting was the first meeting between the two since the South Korean foreign minister took office last month.

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"In order to deal with the threat from North Korea, we need to have policy coordination and the sharing of information between Korea and Japan and with the United States. So I hope that this security cooperation and sharing of information can be normalized as soon as possible," Park said.

The GSOMIA is a bilateral security agreement for South Korea and Japan to share sensitive military and intelligence information. The former Moon Jae-in administration nearly let the pact expire in 2019 in response to Tokyo's tightened controls on exports to Seoul.

However, South Korea conditionally suspended the decision to terminate the agreement following a resolution passed in the U.S. Senate calling on Korea to renew it, leaving the pact in a somewhat precarious state, as the South Korean government had said that it could terminate the GSOMIA at any time.

Since the GSOMIA was first signed in 2016 with the aim of containing North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, it is renewed automatically every year unless one side informs the other 90 days in advance of its plans to end the deal.

Park's remarks stand in line with President Yoon's commitment to normalizing bilateral relations between South Korea and Japan, overshadowed for years by historical and territorial disputes, as evidenced by his repeated calls for a future-oriented approach to restoring the frayed ties.

While attending the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup also said, Sunday, that South Korea will seek to normalize security cooperation with Japan and furthermore strengthen trilateral collaboration involving the U.S. to address Pyongyang's nuclear and missile challenges, adding that the country is open to serious talks with Tokyo.

The three countries plan to hold a combined missile search and tracking exercise in Hawaii in August in a bid to bolster their readiness against North Korea's provocations, an agreement made during a trilateral meeting of their defense chiefs in Singapore, Saturday.

In response to Park's GSOMIA remarks, Japan's defense minister expressed hope that military intelligence would be shared smoothly again with South Korea, according to Japan's Kyodo News.

"I hope there will be exchanges between the two sides toward smoother operation of the General Security of Military Information Agreement," Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said.

Also during the press conference, the top two diplomats warned that North Korea will face a "united and firm" response from South Korea and the U.S., as well as the international community, if it continues its provocations.

The warning comes as the Kim Jong-un regime is highly expected to push the button for a seventh nuclear test soon, according to the two nations' intelligence authorities.

"Pyongyang's continuous provocations will only lead to strengthened deterrence of the alliance and stronger international sanctions measures," Park said.

Blinken said the U.S. is committed to extended deterrence, or a reactivation of the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group, a high-level consultative mechanism to achieve North Korea's denuclearization through steadfast deterrence, which was suspended in 2018.

"That will get up and working very, very soon in the weeks ahead. … We're committed to extended deterrence and we're committed to restarting the work of this group in the weeks ahead," Blinken said.

"It is very important that we continue to strengthen our own defense and deterrence against further action by the DPRK. This is something that we're also engaged in. We're committed, for example, to talking about how we expand the scope and scale of combined military exercises for defensive and preparedness purposes, training on and around the Korean Peninsula."

The DPRK refers to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.