Kyodo News
Leaders of Japan, the United States and South Korea plan to meet in mid-November to respond to rising tensions over North Korea, government sources said on Friday. The leaders are expected to meet on the sidelines of ASEAN-related meetings. In Cambodia or the summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Indonesia. It would be their first trilateral meeting since meeting in Spain in June. Amid mounting fears, the country could conduct its seventh nuclear test, the first since September 2017, ahead of Tuesday's US midterm elections.
US President Joe Biden, South Korean and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, President Yoon Suk Yeol will focus on improving defense cooperation to increase pressure on South Korea, sources said. The three leaders are likely to share concerns about North Korea's nuclear and missile development programs and discuss measures for its full denuclearization. Citing rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, a source said, "A summit between Japan, the United States and South Korea is a top priority."
Kishida will also demand that Seoul and Washington support Tokyo's efforts to immediately investigate North Korea's kidnappings of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. Following the June summit, the three countries held anti-submarine drills on Sept. 30 international waters off the Sea of Japan for the first time in five years. The US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan took part in the exercises.
North Korea, led by Kim Jong Un, has recently conducted a series of missile launches, including one that flew over the Japanese archipelago for the first time in five years on October 4, heightening regional tensions. North Korea launched three ballistic missiles early Thursday and three more overnight. One of the first three to be launched in the early hours of the morning was believed to be a Hwasong-17 ICBM. The others are believed to have been short-range ballistic s. projectiles.
The six rockets crashed into the Sea of Japan. The ICBM launch appears to have failed, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, citing a defense source. During talks in Germany on Thursday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Foreign Minister Antony Blinken condemned North Korea's actions, calling its series of ballistic missile launches an undisputed challenge and serious to the international community. At a meeting at the Pentagon that same day, U.S said
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong Sup agreed to further strengthen the bilateral alliance's capabilities to better counter and respond to threats from North Korea. Lee said he and Austin had claimed that any nuclear attack by North Korea, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, would result in the "end of Kim Jong Un's regime through the overwhelming and decisive response of the alliance," referring to the North Korean leader . Country by Name.
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