Missile warning data sharing between S. Korea, US, Japan to be operational in 'next few days': US official

A system for the real-time sharing of North Korean ballistic missile warning data between South Korea, the United States and Japan is expected to become operational "within the next few days," a White House official said Wednesday.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, the National Security Council senior director for East Asia and Oceania, made the remarks, touching on progress in trilateral cooperation since the landmark Camp David summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in August.

"We are on track to make good on our promise to be sharing real-time missile warning data by the end of this year and in fact, expect that to be operational within the next few days," she said during a keynote speech at the forum hosted by the Brookings Institution.

At the August summit, Yoon, Biden and Kishida agreed to operationalize the trilateral real-time system by the end of this year as their countries have been stepping up security coordination in the face of evolving North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

As the US has bilateral alliance treaties with South Korea and Japan, it has had a data sharing system with each ally, but there has not been a direct data linkage between the two Asian neighbors that have long been in historical feuds stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

Information collected through this method is expected to enhance the countries' overall capabilities to detect and track incoming North Korean missiles, observers said.

Highlighting deepening trilateral cooperation, Rapp-Hooper also noted a "full agenda plan for 2024," which includes trilateral meetings between the three countries' commerce ministers and between their financial ministers in the first half of next year.

During the forum, the official cast the three countries' "commitment to consult" each other in case of a common crisis as "one of the most important things" from the Camp David summit.

She said that the commitment does not place the three countries in a "formal trilateral security guarantee relationship" but acknowledges that they increasingly share a common security environment.

"It has, as the basic premise of trilateral cooperation, also encouraged us to go on to have much deeper ... better informed conversations about mounting challenges in the region, such as DPRK-Russia cooperation or the PRC's recent aggression in the South China Sea," she said.

DPRK and PRC stand for the official names of North Korea and China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China, respectively. (Yonhap)