TOKYO – The Japanese and South Korean defence authorities are set to agree in early June to link their radars via a United States system to share real-time information on North Korea’s ballistic missiles, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

Defence ministers from Japan, South Korea and the US plan to reach an agreement on the sidelines of an Asian defence summit to be held in Singapore in early June, said the source, who declined to be identified because the discussions are not public.

The Japanese government’s top spokesman, Mr Hirokazu Matsuno, said, without elaborating, that no decision has been made yet on the planned agreement.

South Korea’s presidential office said the country would form a group with Japan and the United States to share information about North Korea’s missiles, news agency Yonhap reported. 

The system was currently in the works, the report said, citing a senior official.

A South Korean defence ministry spokesman told a briefing that the three countries have been in talks to devise concrete steps on boosting information sharing, but that nothing has been finalised.

With North Korea launching ballistic missiles at an unprecedented pace in the past year, the three countries in November agreed to speed up information sharing. Japan and South Korea are independently linked to the US’ radar systems but not to each other’s.

Ties between the US’ Asian allies have warmed in recent months in the face of the North Korean threat. Resuming their “shuttle diplomacy”, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in Seoul on Sunday, where they confirmed progress in defence cooperation.

Defence ministers from Japan and South Korea are separately arranging to meet on the sidelines of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue to be held in Singapore from June 2 to 4, in what would be the first such meeting since November 2019. REUTERS