Japan’s Sankei newspaper has reported that South Korea, the United States and Japan will begin operating a system to share North Korean missile warning data in real time as early as Tuesday.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said in a press briefing on Monday that the establishment of the system is in the final stages, and Tokyo is still working with Washington and Seoul on the details.
Hayashi added that the data was not shared when the North launched an intercontinental ballistic missile on Monday.
Last Wednesday, a White House official also reaffirmed that the system is expected to become operational “within the next few days,” saying that the U.S. is on track to keep the promise to share such data by the end of this year.
At the trilateral Camp David summit in August, the leaders of the three nations agreed to operationalize the system by the end of the year as a means of bolstering security coordination in the face of evolving North Korean nuclear and missile threats.
Sankei said that the system will make it easier to detect even low-altitude missiles and enable a more accurate analysis of missile altitude and flight distance at an early stage.
So far, data on North Korea's missile launches has been shared in real time between South Korea and the United States and between Japan and the U.S., but Seoul and Tokyo have not shared up-to-date data.