South Korea, U.S., Japan to launch trilateral exercise

South Korea, the United States and Japan plan to launch a trilateral exercise this summer under an agreement between their defense chiefs in Singapore on Sunday, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, right, shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, center, and Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara before their talks on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Sunday. [YONHAP]

South Korea, the United States and Japan plan to launch a trilateral exercise this summer under an agreement between their defense chiefs in Singapore on Sunday, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry.

According to the agreement reached by South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the new Freedom Edge exercise will involve air, naval and cybersecurity forces from all three countries.

The name of the trilateral exercise was derived from both the Freedom Shield exercise that the United States conducts every year with South Korea and the annual Keen Edge exercise it holds separately with Japan.

Although the three countries occasionally held joint maritime and air drills before, Freedom Edge could mark the beginning of annual trilateral exercises that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to hold regularly during their three-way summit at Camp David last year.

Shin, Austin and Kihara also agreed to hold a trilateral tabletop exercise to prepare for various contingencies in the Indo-Pacific region and devise a formal framework to coordinate security cooperation, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry.

The ministry also said that the defense chiefs agreed to improve their real-time data-sharing system to monitor North Korean missile launches, which began operating in December last year.

While ties between South Korea and Japan have often been strained due to long-running disputes tied to Japan’s 1910-45 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula as well as Tokyo’s claim to Dokdo, a pair of South Korean islets in the East Sea, the two countries are both treaty allies of the United States.

The three countries have ramped up security cooperation against the evolving threat posed by North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs since President Yoon Suk Yeol took office in May 2022.

Whether Freedom Edge will also involve land and amphibious forces from the United States and Japan remains an open question.

On Monday, the commander of South Korea’s Marine Corps said that trilateral amphibious training involving his force is not currently part of plans for Freedom Edge.

Speaking at the Pacific Amphibious Leadership Symposium (PALS) in Seoul, Lt. Gen. Kim Kye-hwan said that a joint amphibious exercise with the United States and Japan “has not been discussed or considered” and “would require further consideration by the Defense Ministry.”

Lt. Gen. William Jurney, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific, said at the conference that his force is looking at opportunities across all domains and not specifically at “any particular exercise or nation.”

PALS is co-hosted annually by the South Korean Marine Corps and U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific.

More than 300 officials from 24 countries across the Indo-Pacific region attended this year’s conference to discuss ways to enhance cooperation and improve amphibious operations.

The head of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force also attended the event.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]