The United States, Japan and South Korea are sending a clear message with their coordination on policy towards North Korea, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday, despite some recent friction between the two Asian allies. “That close coordination sends a very critical message to North Korea in that we are together and shoulder-to-shoulder in our approach to this policy,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told reporters after meeting the vice foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea.
The three-way talks were held in Tokyo despite frayed relations between Japan and South Korea, largely a result of recriminations by both sides stemming from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
A new chapter of the historic dispute that blew up in 2019 hit trade between the neighbours and threatened to undermine their cooperation on security in the face of a common threat from North Korea and its nuclear and missile programmes. South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently decided not to visit the Tokyo Olympics, which open on Friday, for what would have been his first summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
