Japan, the United States and South Korea are studying the possibility of holding a summit in mid-November on North Korea

The leaders of Japan, the United States and South Korea are planning to meet in mid-November in response to rising tensions around North Korea, government sources reported on Friday as reported by Kyodo News.

The leaders are expected to meet on the sidelines of ASEAN-related meetings in Cambodia or the summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Indonesia. It would be their first trilateral meeting since they met in June in Spain.

The proposed talks came as North Korea has been ramping up ballistic missile launches at an unprecedented rate, with growing fears the country could carry out its seventh nuclear test, the first since September 2017, in the run-up. to the US midterm elections on Tuesday.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol plan to focus on ways to enhance defense cooperation to intensify pressure on North Korea, according to the sources. .

The three leaders are likely to share their concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programs and discuss measures for its complete denuclearization.

Japan and South Korea seek to improve their bilateral relations

Citing rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, one of the sources said: “A Japan-US-South Korea summit meeting is of top priority.”

Kishida will also ask that Seoul and Washington assist Tokyo in its efforts to immediately resolve North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.

Following the June summit, the three countries held anti-submarine exercises in international waters off the Sea of ​​Japan on Sept. 30 for the first time in five years. The US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan participated in the exercises.

The three leaders are likely to share their concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programs.

North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has recently carried out a series of missile launches, including one that flew over the Japanese archipelago for the first time in five years on October 4, raising regional tensions.

On Thursday, North Korea launched three ballistic missiles in the early morning and another three overnight. One of the first three launched overnight is believed to have been a Hwasong-17, an intercontinental ballistic missile. The others are believed to have been short-range ballistic projectiles.

All six missiles fell into the Sea of ​​Japan. The intercontinental missile launch apparently failed, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, citing a defense source.

During talks in Germany on Thursday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned North Korea’s actions, calling its series of ballistic missile launches an uncontested defiance and serious for the international community.

On Thursday, North Korea launched three ballistic missiles in the early morning and another three overnight.

In a meeting at the Pentagon that same day, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong Sup agreed to further strengthen the bilateral alliance’s capabilities to deter and respond better to North Korean threats.

Lee said that he and Austin asserted that any nuclear attack by North Korea, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, would result in the “end of Kim Jong Un’s regime through the alliance’s overwhelming and decisive response,” referring to the country’s leader by name.