AFP, SEOULSouth Korea yesterday decided against scrapping a critical military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan in a dramatic 11th-hour U-turn that will come as a relief to the US. Kim You-geun, a national security official at Seoul’s presidential Blue House, confirmed that the Japan–South Korea General Security of Military Information Agreement would not be allowed to lapse at midnight. Seoul and Tokyo are both major US allies seen as an anchor of stability in a tinderbox region with overbearing China and wayward, nuclear-armed North Korea. “We continue to strongly demand South Korea to remedy as soon as possible the current situation that violates the international law.”The agreement, signed in 2016, enabled the two US allies to share military secrets, particularly over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile capacity. Ditching the pact would have been “a huge setback for one of the pillars of East Asia’s security that Japan, South Korea and the United States have established,” said Kenichiro Sasae, a former top Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official and ambassador to the US.

Source: Taipei Times November 22, 2019 15:56 UTC