SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said on Thursday that it would restart talks with Japan about a military intelligence-sharing pact, four years after a similar agreement was canceled in the face of a domestic furor.
Officials at the Defense Ministry said in a news briefing on Thursday that such an agreement would allow South Korea to better address the growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. The South hopes to sign a deal by the end of the year, the officials said.
The United States has also pressed Japan and South Korea, its allies, to increase military cooperation so that the three countries could more effectively work together to monitor and confront the military threats from the North. Senior officials from all three countries met in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss ways of increasing pressure on North Korea.
But South Koreans remain wary of cooperating too closely with Japan, especially given its relatively nationalist administration under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which some say has tried to glorify Japan’s brutal colonial rule of Korea in the early 20th century.
In 2012, a deal was postponed at the last minute after criticism that the government had not allowed enough public debate.
Two years later, the United States persuaded South Korea and Japan to sign a trilateral pact on sharing intelligence on North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities. Even then, Japan and South Korea did not agree to share data directly; under the agreement, the United States acted as an intermediary.
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