The Hankyoreh:
Senior diplomats from South Korea, the US and Japan met in Honolulu, Hawaii, on July 14 and promised to strengthen trilateral cooperation. It was the fourth such deliberation between deputy minister-level diplomats from the three countries.
While the three countries agreed on the need to respond to North Korean nuclear weapons and to deploy the THAAD missile defense system with US forces in South Korea, there were some subtle differences in their position on how to resolve conflict in the South China Sea.
US Vice President Joe Biden, who attended the meeting as a stop on his way to Australia, remarked that the three countries share fundamental values and a vision for the future of the Asia-Pacific region.
He also said that the US was strongly committed to its policy of the Asia-Pacific rebalance and that it would strengthen its alliances with South Korea and with Japan, which provide an important foundation for this policy.
The meeting brought together South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama. In a joint press conference following the meeting, Lim said North Korea’s nuclear program had been one of the key items on the agenda. The three diplomats promised to increase trilateral cooperation aimed at denuclearizing North Korea and to work together to continue their faithful implementation of UN Security Council resolutions.
In regard to deploying THAAD on the Korean Peninsula, Blinken reiterated that THAAD is “not aimed at a third country” like China.
