Korea, US, Japan to kick off 1st trilateral exercises this year

SINGAPORE -- The defense ministers of South Korea, the United States and Japan on Sunday agreed to launch a trilateral exercise under the name "Freedom Edge," starting this summer.

The plan for the trilateral exercise was reached at a meeting held on the last day of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore.

The trilateral exercise is to build on efforts outlined at the Camp David summit last year, according to the joint statement issued after the Singapore meeting.

According to the Seoul Ministry of National Defense, the plan involves exercises in the air, surface, underwater and -- for the first time -- in cyberspace. So far there have been no such multidomain exercises between the three countries.

“Freedom Edge, the trilateral exercise across several domains, will be held for the first time this summer," Seoul Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told reporters after the meeting with his US and Japanese counterparts. "We are still in the process of finalizing exactly when.”

The South Korean minister said the meeting was “very fruitful.” “We had in-depth discussions on how to institutionalize the three-way security cooperation,” he said.

According to a senior Defense Ministry official, the joint drill "is anticipated" to be held regularly.

In remarks delivered Saturday at the defense summit, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hinted that the highlight of the multiyear trilateral exercise plan established following the Camp David summit was that “a new, named exercise will allow our countries to train together in unprecedented ways.”

To institutionalize the three-way security cooperation, the ministers agreed to come up with a framework by the end of this year. The framework would outline information-sharing, defense exchange cooperation and senior-level policy consultations, among other objectives.

The ministers also agreed to rotate on hosting trilateral ministerial meetings, trilateral chiefs of defense meetings and defense trilateral talks from this year.

Meanwhile, to deter North Korean missile threats, the ministers decided to come up with a set of written instructions, or standard operating procedures, for exchanging real-time warning data for detecting missiles launched by North Korea.