by REERA YOO | @reeraboo
editor@charactermedia.com
South Korea, Japan and the U.S. will sign their first joint intelligent-sharing pact on Dec. 29 to better prepare and respond to the increasing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, reports the Associated Press.
Although the U.S. currently has separate, bilateral intelligence-sharing pacts with South Korea and Japan, the two Asian countries do not have such agreements, partly due to the unresolved tensions stemming from Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. In 2012, Seoul and Tokyo almost signed an intelligence-sharing pact, but it was ultimately scrapped after public uproar in South Korea.
Under the new trilateral agreement, South Korea and Japan would share intelligence only on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, with the U.S. serving as the mediator, according to a statement from Seoul’s Defense Ministry.
“We believe that the arrangement will be very effective in deterring the communist country from launching provocations in the first place,” a ministry official told Yonhap. “The cooperation between the three nations is expected to boost the quality of the intelligence on North Korea, which will enable the allies to respond to possible provocations in a swifter fashion.”
The agreement comes after Pyongyang’s recent threat to carry out nuclear strikes in protest of a United Nations resolution on the regime’s human rights abuses. North Korea has also threatened to retaliate against the U.S. over Sony Pictures’ satirical comedy The Interview.
The vice defense ministers of South Korea, Japan and the U.S. will formally sign the trilateral pact on Monday.
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Photo courtesy of AFP Photo/Saul Loeb
