South Korea’s Defense Ministry has initiated a process to normalize a key military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan following an agreement between Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol during their breakthrough summit on Thursday.
The South Korean Defense Ministry said it sent a letter to the country's Foreign Ministry asking for measures to normalize the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) deal, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported late Friday, citing unidentified officials.
Japan's Defense Ministry on Friday welcomed the stable implementation of the pact, but the exact measures Seoul was seeking were unclear.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry is expected to soon send an official letter detailing the move to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
During their summit Thursday — just hours after North Korea fired one of its powerful long-range missiles into waters 250 kilometers off Hokkaido — Yoon said South Korea would work to “completely normalize” the GSOMIA pact.
GSOMIA allows the neighbors to directly share military intelligence, including that related to North Korea’s missile launches and nuclear weapons program. Signed in November 2016, the agreement was lauded by observers as a rare symbol of cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul despite their bitter history and territorial rows.
Just three years later, Yoon’s predecessor, President Moon Jae-in, expressed his administration’s intention to let the accord expire after Japan imposed export restrictions on Seoul amid a row over wartime labor. Under pressure from the U.S. and Japan, it later put that plan on hold, leaving it still technically in effect but in a de facto state of limbo.
The pact makes it far easier for Seoul to access information gathered by Tokyo’s powerful spy satellites, advanced radars and patrol planes. These high-tech systems, many of which South Korea lacks, are crucial for analyzing North Korean military threats, including its missile launches.
But it is also of immense value for Japan. Due to South Korea’s proximity to the North, Seoul can more quickly detect missile launches. GSOMIA also gives Tokyo access to Seoul’s network of spies, defectors and other on-the-ground human sources.
Normalization of the agreement will provide a boost to pledges to enhance bilateral security cooperation — including by the two leaders last November — in the face of North Korea’s repeated missile launches.
Last November, Japan, South Korea and their mutual ally, the United States, agreed to work toward sharing North Korean missile-warning data in real time. The three countries are reportedly planning working-level defense talks in Washington in mid-April to pave the way for enabling the real-time information sharing.
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