South Korea, the United States and Japan have produced significant progress on a pact on sharing their military intelligence to better deal with threats from North Korea, Seoul’s defense ministry said.

Still, the three have yet to reach a final consensus on the issue, the ministry said, denying a report by Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper that the allies will sign the deal within this year.

In May, the three nations agreed to begin discussing the matter, stressing “the importance of sharing intelligence about North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.”

“Working-level discussions are under way among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, and we’ve made significant progress,” Seoul’s defense ministry said in a news release.

“But the final agreement has yet to be reached,” it said, without elaborating on a specific time frame for a deal.

The move comes as North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs pose threats to South Korea and other regional powers. North Korea has recently threatened to push for another nuclear test in protest of a U.N. resolution against its alleged human rights abuse.

The bilateral military intelligence pact was reached between Seoul and Washington, and between Tokyo and Washington, but not between Seoul and Tokyo.

Prospects have been murky over the trilateral military pact due to the soured relations between South Korea and Japan over historical rows stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The two neighbors had come close to signing a pact on boosting exchanges of military intelligence on North Korea in 2012, but Seoul dropped the plan at the last minute due to a wave of negative public opinion for handling the issue behind closed doors.

Many South Koreans still harbor deep resentment against Japan over its harsh colonial rule. (Yonhap)