A White House official says South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will soon begin activating a system to share warning data on North Korean missile launches in real time.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, senior director for East Asia and Oceania at the National Security Council, said during a forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. is on track to fulfill its promise to share such data by the end of this year and “expects that to be operational within the next few days.”

Seoul, Washington and Tokyo had agreed to launch such a system within the year to better respond to the North’s nuclear weapons and missile threats.

Rapp-Hooper added that the three countries will hold meetings of their commerce ministers as well as their financial ministers in the first half of next year.

She emphasized that the three countries' "commitment to consult" each other to swiftly respond to regional challenges and threats to their joint interests and security is "one of the most important things" from the Camp David trilateral summit.

Rapp-Hooper was quick to add that the commitment does not place the three countries in a "formal trilateral security guarantee relationship,” and thus does not violate any existing bilateral security commitments between the U.S. and Japan or the U.S. and South Korea.

[Photo : YONHAP News]