Senior officials from Japan, the US and South Korea condemned North Korea over its recent ICBM-class ballistic missile launches and vowed to step up their trilateral cooperation to strengthen deterrence and sanctions against the North, while stressing the need for dialogue with Pyongyang.
Their meeting Thursday in the central Japanese city of Karuizawa comes days after North Korea’s solid-fuel ICBM launch last week, which landed in the water off the western coast of Japan’s northern main island of Hokkaido and one day after the launch of two missiles on Wednesday.
The US special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, also said that the United States was “working hard” to gather information about an American soldier who fled to the North earlier this month. The US was seeking to ensure his safety and return him home, Kim said.
Pvt Travis King, 23, had been held in South Korea on assault charges and was released on July 10 after serving his time. He was taken to the airport Monday but did not board his flight home. Instead, he joined a tourist trip to the border and bolted to the North Korean side.
Kim said he and his Japanese counterpart, Takehiro Funakoshi, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau at the Foreign Ministry, and South Korea’s Kim Gunn, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs.
