Japan's defense chief to visit South Korea by year-end

South Korea's defense ministry said Thursday that Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani will visit the country by the end of this year.

Nakatani agreed on his first visit to South Korea as Japan's defense chief since October 2015 at a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Yong-hyun, in the Lao capital of Vientiane the same day, according to the ministry.

Itineraries will be fixed later, but the visit is highly likely to be scheduled for late next month, people familiar with the matter said.

No Japanese defense minister has made a trip to the neighboring country in the nine years since Nakatani's previous visit as then-defense chief.

Japan-South Korea defense ties soured after a fire-control radar rock-on incident involving a South Korean warship and a Self-Defense Force aircraft in 2018. But the defense ministries of the two countries have reactivated interchanges since their chiefs agreed on measures to prevent such a dangerous event from happening again in June this year.

Meanwhile, Nakatani and Kim condemned the enhanced military ties between Russia and North Korea, which have led to Pyongyang's dispatch of troops to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ministry said.

The ministers also acknowledged the necessity of not only bilateral but trilateral cooperation involving the United States and underscored the importance of continuing to develop the cooperative ties under the severe security environment, in which North Korea has been sophisticating its nuclear and missile capabilities.

Nakatani has expressed his eagerness to visit South Korea as soon as possible since taking office last month.

He particularly hopes to reaffirm the significance of the trilateral cooperation before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who focuses not on cooperation but on deals, takes the oath of office in January, an informed source said.