SEOUL — South Korea and Japan came together Sunday to restate their dedication to ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons, while also agreeing to bring back joint search-and-rescue military drills as part of growing security cooperation between the two neighboring nations.
South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back sat down with his Japanese counterpart Shinjiro Koizumi in Seoul for their sixth round of bilateral talks. The two ministers agreed to pursue regional stability both on their own and through their shared alliance with Washington.
“Both ministers shared the view to continue cooperation for maintaining regional peace and stability amid a grave security environment,” South Korea’s defence ministry said in an official statement following the meeting.
With encouragement from the United States, South Korea and Japan have been working since 2022 to build stronger ties and move past long-standing historical grievances. That effort has continued under President Lee Jae Myung and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
The relationship has not always been smooth. In 2019, Seoul moved to dissolve the GSOMIA intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan after Tokyo placed restrictions on semiconductor material exports and removed South Korea from its preferential trade list — disputes rooted in Japan’s colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.
In 2025, Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and President Lee committed to deeper security and economic cooperation. Their defence ministers pledged to coordinate with Washington to counter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and Pyongyang’s expanding military relationship with Russia, including collaboration on artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, and annual trilateral military exercises.
In January 2026, Takaichi and Lee agreed to strengthen shuttle diplomacy between the two countries, and in May they broadened their cooperation to include energy matters.
Sunday’s meeting also produced an agreement to continue exchanges between the two nations’ elite aerobatic flight teams — South Korea’s Black Eagles and Japan’s Blue Impulse — as well as to advance joint search-and-rescue exercises covering a range of maritime emergency scenarios.
The two defence ministers had previously met in Japan in January and again in May at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where discussions touched on a potential military logistics support agreement involving fuel, food, and ammunition. They had also agreed at that time to conduct a joint humanitarian search-and-rescue exercise in June — the first such drill in nearly ten years.
Despite the progress, tensions between the two countries have not fully faded. Disputes remain over Korean women who were forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War Two. In February, Seoul formally protested a Japanese government event honoring a group of contested islands — called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea — which are currently under South Korean control.
