Seoul: South Korea and Japan on Sunday held a joint maritime search and rescue exercise (SAREX) for the first time in nine years, the South Korean Navy said.
The drill was conducted by the South Korean Navy and Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force in international waters southeast of Jeju Island, according to the Navy.
The exercise involved the South Korean Navy’s 4,900-tonne ROKS Cheon Ja Bong landing ship, Japan’s 7,250-tonne Aegis-equipped Kongo destroyer, and a Japanese maritime patrol helicopter, Yonhap news agency reported.
Launched in 1999, the biennial SAREX exercise was designed to train procedures for coordinated responses between naval ships from both countries in the event of maritime incidents in waters near the Korean Peninsula.
The drills had been suspended since the 10th round in 2017, as bilateral ties soured following a dispute over a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft making an unusually low-altitude flyby over a South Korean warship in December 2018.
The two countries agreed to resume the exercises in their Defence Ministers’ talks in January and announced their schedule during another round of bilateral ministerial talks on the sidelines of the Asia Security Summit, also known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, in Singapore last month.
Ahead of their talks in Singapore, South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back described the expanding exchanges at the defence ministerial level as “ping-pong diplomacy”, calling the development yet another milestone in their bilateral ties.
Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, in turn, underscored that such meetings are not taking place just out of goodwill or friendship, but “necessity” given the current security challenges shared by both countries.
“To promote peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, it is important for Japan and South Korea to take a leading role, including through the US-Japan alliance, the US-ROK (Republic of Korea) alliance, and broader strategic cooperation to maintain and strengthen deterrence and response capabilities,” he said through an interpreter.
(IANS)
