Asia Pacific

Officials: Multilateral Effort Needed to Curb North Korean Cyber, Nuclear Threat

North Korea’s continued testing of nuclear weapons and expanded submarine-launched ballistic missiles threaten not only the South Korea, United States forces on the peninsula, and Japan but the global community, one of Seoul’s senior defense acquisition planners told a Washington forum Monday.

“Bilateral and multilateral cooperation is needed” to counter Pyongyang’s defiance of U.N. security resolutions to end those programs, Kim Il Dong, director general of the acquisition planning bureau in its Defense Acquisition Program, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS), a Washington, D.C., think-tank.

In his presentation, he said Japan and Singapore and possibly one or two others could come together with Washington and Seoul on how best to deal with North Korea. A forum for that to start could be U.S. Pacific Command’s 2017 conference to discuss regional security issues.

Last week, PACOM commander Adm. Harry Harris said he advocates the creation of more multilateral defense agreements, particularly ones with an eye toward detering North Korea.