South Korea and the United States plan to hold their key regular defense talks in Washington next week, a Pentagon spokesperson said Thursday, in a sign that the allies are maintaining close security cooperation under the Trump administration to counter evolving North Korean threats.
The spokesperson said that the Korea-US Integrated Defense Dialogue is set to take place at the Pentagon on Thursday and Friday. The upcoming meeting will mark the first KIDD gathering since US President Donald Trump took office in January.
"The Korea-US Integrated Defense Dialogue will occur next week and there will be a joint press statement release after the meeting," the spokesperson told Yonhap News Agency via email.
Launched in 2011, KIDD is a comprehensive senior-level defense meeting between the allies.
Next week's talks will be attended by Cho Chang-rae, South Korea's deputy defense minister for policy and key US defense officials -- John Noh, who performs the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, and Andrew Winternitz, who performs the duties of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia.
Participants will touch on a range of bilateral security policy cooperation issues, including reinforcing deterrence against evolving North Korean nuclear and missile threats, and the allies' combined defense posture, the South's defense ministry said in a release.
The two sides also plan to hold in-depth discussions on the allies' joint efforts for the conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control from the US to South Korea and cooperation in the areas of shipbuilding and maintenance, repair and overhaul, it said.
The forthcoming KIDD meeting is expected to help ease lingering concerns that a political transition period in Seoul following the ouster of President Yoon Suk Yeol could have a negative effect on the allies' security policy coordination.
Stoking worries over defense collaboration, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skipped South Korea in his recent trip to the Indo-Pacific that included stops in Japan and the Philippines. His predecessor, Lloyd Austin, also canceled the Korea portion of his Asia swing in December.
Asked to comment on the future operation of the Nuclear Consultative Group, the allies' key nuclear deterrence body, the spokesperson said that "NCG deliberations are ongoing."
Earlier this week, an official in Seoul said that Seoul and Washington will keep the NCG running under the Trump administration with its next meeting set to take place as early as June.
The NCG was launched by former President Yoon and former US President Joe Biden following their April 2023 summit to strengthen the US "extended deterrence" commitment to defending its ally South Korea with all of its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons. (Yonhap)
