Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held a telephone conversation with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Thursday, during which the parties strongly condemned North Korea's recent missile launches and agreed to work toward expanding cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul in the field of security, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said
TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th October, 2022) Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held a telephone conversation with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Thursday, during which the parties strongly condemned North Korea's recent missile launches and agreed to work toward expanding cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul in the field of security, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.
"The leaders stressed that North Korea conducted six ballistic missile launches in only a short period of time since late September, including a launch on the morning of October 6 and a launch on October 4, when the missile flew over Japan for the first time in five years. They strongly condemned such actions, which are a serious threat to regional security and a clear and serious challenge to the international community," the ministry said in a press statement.
Kishida and Yoon also stressed the importance of further strengthening the defense and response capabilities of the US-Japan and US-South Korea alliances, while reaffirming the common position to "expand cooperation between the United States, Japan and South Korea in the field of security" and "take all possible measures to achieve complete denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula, the statement read.
According to the Yonhap news agency, Yoon and Kishida agreed to consider their countries as partners who should cooperate on international issues, and spoke in favor of sending Pyongyang a signal that "reckless provocations" would come with consequences.
Earlier in the day, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff informed that North Korea had launched two short-range missiles from the Samsok district in Pyongyang at 06.01 and 06:23 local time (21:01 GMT and 21:23 GMT on Wednesday, respectively).
In turn, the Japanese military stressed that both missiles fell outside Japan's exclusive economic zone. The range of the missiles was 350 and 800 kilometers (217 and 497 miles), and the maximum altitude was 100 and 50 kilometers, respectively. To date, there have been no reports of damage to sea or aircraft.
If the reports on the missile test are confirmed, it would mark North Korea's sixth missile launch in September and the 24th since the beginning of the year. On Tuesday, the country launched a ballistic missile that flew over Japan's northern Aomori Prefecture and fell outside territorial waters 3,000 kilometers east of Iwate Prefecture. The South Korean and Japanese military believe that Pyongyang tested a medium-range ballistic missile such as Hwasong-12, which flew a record distance of 4,600 kilometers.
