U.S., Japan & S. Korea Vow Closer Security Cooperation Amid N. Korean Missile Drills

The U.S., Japan and South Korea closed ranks in condemning North Korean recent missile drills after a trilateral summit of their leaders on the fringes of the ASEAN summit in Cambodia.

• In a joint statement, the allies lauded "the unprecedented level of trilateral coordination" and pledged to further boost their security ties amid North Korean military provocations, which pose a "grave threat" to peace in the region.
• Japan's Fumio Kishida and South Korea's Yoon Suk-yeol held a separate bilateral meeting, the first formal top-level summit in almost three years, as common geopolitical threats push them towards closer cooperation.
• Kishida and Yoon "agreed to continue discussions for a swift resolution" of disputes related to wartime issues, which have weighed on bilateral relations in the recent years. They also agreed to continue communicating at the leader level.