Top security officials of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan have held a virtual meeting to discuss ways to respond to military cooperation between North Korea and Russia. 

The presidential office said Kim Tae-hyo, first deputy director of the National Security Office, Kurt Campbell, coordinator for the Indo-Pacific for the U.S. National Security Council, and Keiichi Ichikawa, the director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry’s North American Affairs Bureau held such talks on Thursday. 

The participants shared assessments on military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow while agreeing on the need to work more closely at a time when Russia and the North continuously deny having engaged in military cooperation. 

They also agreed that any arms transfer by the North is a clear violation of UN Security Council(UNSC) resolutions, adding that Russia is all the more obligated to observe related resolutions as it had taken part in their adoption. 

The top officials vowed to further solidify their countries’ cooperation system produced during the Camp David summit last August while actively working to address the North’s additional provocations and the military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow as members of the UNSC this year.