Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers remarks from the Pentagon, Jan. 30, 2025. (Alexander Kubitza/U.S. Navy)
SEOUL, South Korea — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke Friday with his counterparts in South Korea and Japan, vowing to strengthen military ties with both countries amid regional security concerns, according to their respective defense ministries.
In his first phone call with South Korea’s acting defense minister, Hegseth and Kim Seon-ho agreed to “deepen and expand the level and scope” of their 71-year military alliance and strengthen security ties with Japan to deter North Korea, South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense said in a statement Friday.
Hegseth also spoke that day with Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani. The two expressed their “firm intent to continue the initiatives to reinforce the alliance,” Japan’s Defense Ministry said in a news release.
They also agreed to “bilaterally cooperate to realize the vision of a free and open” Indo-Pacific and reaffirmed that their security treaty covers the Senkaku Islands, which China claims as its territory.
South Korea's acting defense minister, Kim Seon-ho, speaks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by phone from Seoul, South Korea, Jan. 31, 2025. (South Korean Ministry of National Defense)
Hegseth took office Jan. 26, a day after his Senate confirmation. Kim had been South Korea’s deputy defense minister before Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun resigned Dec. 4, citing his role in the country’s short-lived martial law declaration a day earlier.
During his first term, President Donald Trump scaled back joint military drills with South Korea, citing costs and concerns that they provoked Pyongyang. Trump and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in attempted to broker peace with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un through a series of summits in 2018 and 2019.
In a Fox News interview Jan. 23, Trump described Kim as a “smart guy” and said he would reach out to him again.
Former President Joe Biden took a different approach, strengthening U.S. military ties with South Korea. He pledged to then-South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that any North Korean nuclear attack on the South “will be met with a swift, overwhelming and decisive response,” according to an April 26 White House statement.
Three months later, the USS Kentucky sailed into Busan, marking the first visit by a U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine to South Korea in 42 years. An Air Force B-52H Stratofortress later landed at a South Korean air base on Oct. 17, 2023 – the first such landing in at least 30 years.
Yoon also pushed for stronger military ties with Japan, a departure from his predecessors. Historical disputes between Seoul and Tokyo have often complicated U.S. efforts to bolster security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.
The trilateral partnership has led to unprecedented military exercises, including the first-ever U.S.-South Korea-Japan bomber escort drill on Oct. 22, 2023. The three nations also launched a real-time data-sharing system in December to track North Korean missile tests.
North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency has condemned the trilateral cooperation as a declaration of war.
The country has launched at least three ballistic missiles so far this year. Its most recent launch, on Jan. 14, involved several short-range ballistic missiles that flew about 155 miles off its eastern coast, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
