The national security advisers of South Korea, the United States and Japan condemned North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch this week as a "flagrant" breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions in a phone call Sunday, the White House said.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Cho Tae-yong and Takeo Akiba, respectively, after Pyongyang fired an ICBM on Monday morning (Korea time) in its fifth long-range rocket launch this year.
"The national security advisers condemned the test, which is a flagrant violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions," the White House said in a readout.
Sullivan reaffirmed the U.S.' "unwavering" commitment to the defense of South Korea and Japan, it added.
The three sides agreed that their latest engagement marked an "important exercise of the Commitment to Consult" that President Yoon Suk Yeol, U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made during their Camp David trilateral summit in August.
"They also underscored the importance of their work to share missile warning data and to coordinate responses to growing cooperation between Russia and the DPRK," the White House said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North's latest saber-rattling followed the second session of the South Korea-U.S. Nuclear Consultative Group last week, where the allies agreed to craft guidelines on the planning and operation of a nuclear strategy by the middle of next year and incorporate scenarios of nuclear operations in major allied drills.
Source: Yonhap News Agency