South Korea, U.S., Japan foreign ministers to meet in Manila

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi in Manila on Wednesday, Yonhap reported. The trilateral meeting will occur on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations-related ministerial meetings in the Philippine capital.

It will be the second such gathering in two weeks after the ministers met on July 7 during the NATO summit in Ankara. At the earlier session the three sides reaffirmed their commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and vowed to continue efforts to pursue dialogue with Pyongyang.

They also signed a memorandum of cooperation to establish a framework for accelerating the deployment of small modular reactors in third countries, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region.

The upcoming meeting will address issues on North Korea, ways to enhance trilateral security cooperation and economic ties, and the Middle East crisis along with other regional and global developments, according to South Korea's foreign ministry. Cho Hyun is scheduled to begin a two-day visit to the Philippines on Tuesday.

He will attend the Korea-ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting, the ASEAN Plus Three ministerial meeting, the ASEAN Regional Forum foreign ministers' meeting and the East Asia Summit foreign ministers' meeting.

On the sidelines of those gatherings Cho plans bilateral talks with counterparts from Australia, Thailand, New Zealand, Brunei and the Philippines. , Japan and China. During the ASEAN meetings Cho is expected to reaffirm Seoul's commitment to strengthening cooperation with ASEAN and explain the government's efforts to promote peaceful coexistence and shared prosperity on the Korean Peninsula.