SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
South Korea moves to 'normalise' military pact with Japan
Seoul, March 18 (AFP) Mar 18, 2023
South Korea will fully implement a key military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan, a defence ministry official told AFP on Saturday, as the two countries move to thaw long-frozen relations and renew diplomacy to counter Pyongyang.

At a fence-mending summit on Thursday, the neighbours agreed to turn the page on a bitter dispute over Japan's use of war-time forced labour.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been keen to end the spat and present a united front against the nuclear-armed North, had flown to Japan to meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the first such summit in 12 years.

According to a pool report, Yoon told Kishida he wanted a "complete normalisation" of a 2016 military agreement called the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which enables the two US allies to share military secrets, particularly over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile capacity.

Following the summit, South Korea's foreign ministry was asked "to proceed with the needed measures to normalise the agreement," said a defence ministry official, who declined to be named.

The foreign ministry is expected to send a formal letter to its Japanese counterpart soon, the official added.

Seoul had threatened to scrap GSOMIA in 2019 as relations with Tokyo soured over trade disputes and a historical row stemming from Japan's 35-year colonial rule over the peninsula.

In response, an alarmed United States said that calling off the pact would only benefit North Korea and China.

Hours before it was set to expire, South Korea agreed to extend GSOMIA "conditionally", but warned it could be "terminated" at any moment.

Confronted with Pyongyang's growing aggression and flurry of missile tests, the neighbours have increasingly sought to bury the hatchet.

The increasing security challenge was thrown into sharp relief just before Yoon's arrival in Tokyo on Thursday as North Korea test-fired what it said was an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Last year, Pyongyang declared itself an "irreversible" nuclear power, and recently leader Kim Jong Un called for an "exponential" increase in weapons production.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
PLD Space selected as leading contender for ESA sovereign launch initiative
UK thermal satellite firm wins ESA contract to deliver real time climate and security insights
UK opens competitive bid for GBP 75 million orbital cleanup mission

24/7 Energy News Coverage
China speeds up renewables building spree: report
French giant EDF will take 12.5 pecent stake in new UK nuclear plant
Major US teachers union teams up with AI giants

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
BlackSky expands Gen-3 access to bolster Ukraine-focused intelligence operations
Maxar secures $205 million in multi-year deals to boost space capabilities across MEA
K2 Space validates satellite systems in orbit and fires record-breaking thruster

24/7 News Coverage
The long slow death of Norway's wild salmon
Beijing decries 'discriminatory' ban on Chinese purchases of US farmland
China's 'new farmers' learn to livestream in rural revitalisation



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.