South Korea, U.S. and Japan's Top Diplomats to Hold Talks in Manila This Week

South Korea's top diplomat is set to sit down with his American and Japanese counterparts in Manila this week, as the three allies look to keep up the momentum built during a similar meeting at the NATO summit earlier this month. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun will hold trilateral talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi on Wednesday, according to Seoul's foreign ministry.

The meeting is scheduled on the fringes of a packed calendar of ASEAN-related ministerial gatherings in the Philippine capital, which Cho will attend during a two-day visit starting Tuesday. Officials said the agenda will include coordinating positions on North Korea, deepening trilateral security and economic cooperation, and exchanging views on the escalating Middle East crisis alongside other regional issues.

The Manila session builds directly on a trilateral meeting the three ministers held on July 7 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. At that gathering, the ministers reaffirmed a shared commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and said they would keep pursuing avenues for dialogue with Pyongyang. The three countries also signed a memorandum of cooperation aimed at accelerating the rollout of small modular reactors in third countries, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

Beyond the trilateral session, Cho's Manila itinerary is dense. He is due to take part in the Korea-ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting, the ASEAN Plus Three session that includes Japan and China, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the East Asia Summit foreign ministers' meeting. Ministry officials said Cho intends to use these platforms to reaffirm Seoul's commitment to ASEAN partnership and to lay out the government's push for peaceful coexistence and shared prosperity on the peninsula.

Cho is also expected to hold a string of bilateral meetings on the sidelines with counterparts from Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, Brunei and the host nation, the Philippines. Seoul is additionally working to arrange separate bilateral talks with U.S., Japanese and Chinese officials during the gathering, ministry officials said.

The back-to-back trilateral meetings in Ankara and now Manila underscore how Seoul, Washington and Tokyo have institutionalized their coordination on North Korea and broader regional security in recent months, even as attention across the diplomatic community is increasingly pulled toward the intensifying conflict in the Middle East.