South Korea and the United States held their first working-level meeting on cybersecurity Friday to discuss ways to develop joint cyberwarfare capabilities and an emergency response system, Seoul's defense ministry said.

The meeting comes after defense ministries of the two nations last year agreed to launch the Cyber Cooperation Working Group in light of a series of large-scale hack attacks into South Korean networks, which was believed to have been masterminded by North Korea.

During the first meeting, South Korean defense ministry's policy director, Jang Hyuk, and his American counterpart John Davis will share intelligence on the latest cyberthreat and discuss ways to step up cooperation to develop cyberpolicy, joint warfare capabilities and training programs, the ministry said.

"The two sides will discuss a broad range of cybersecurity-related issues to identify a clearer definition of cyberwarfare and establish engagement rules in case of cyberattacks into government network and major facilities," a senior ministry official said, asking for anonymity.

On Thursday, Military and cybersecurity officials of the two nations held a table top exercise under hypothetical cyberattack scenarios to identify vulnerabilities in each nation's emergency response system and discussed detailed countermeasures, the ministry said.

South Korea launched the Cyber Command in early 2010 to guard against hacking by the North, which is known to be running a cyberwarfare unit composed of 3,000 elite hackers who are trained to break into other computer networks for information and spread computer viruses. (Yonhap News)