TOKYO (Reuters) – Defense authorities in Japan and South Korea will agree early next month to link their radars through a U.S. system to share real-time information on North Korean ballistic missiles, a person said on Tuesday. with knowledge of the matter.
The defense ministers of Japan, South Korea and the United States plan to reach an agreement on the sidelines of an Asian defense summit in Singapore early next month, said the person, who declined to be named because discussions they are not public.
With North Korea launching ballistic missiles at an unprecedented rate last year, the three countries agreed in November to speed up information sharing. Japan and South Korea are independently linked to US radar systems, but not to each other.
Ties between the US’s Asian allies have strengthened in recent months in the face of the threat from North Korea. Resuming their “transport diplomacy,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul on Sunday, where they confirmed progress on defense cooperation.
The defense ministers of Japan and South Korea are hosting separate meetings on the sidelines of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue to be held in Singapore from June 2-4, in what would be the first such meeting since November 2019.
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(Reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto; Writing by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Gerry Doyle)
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