(VOVworld) – Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that Deputy Foreign Ministers from South Korea, the US and Japan strongly condemned North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations and had agreed to step up cooperation towards the North's denuclearization.

South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam (R) poses next to U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden along with his two counterparts from Washington and Japan after holding a trilateral meeting in Hawaii on Thursday. (Photo: Yonhap)

The agreement came during a trilateral meeting between South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Thursday. The Yonhap news agency quoted the Ministry’s press release after the meeting, saying that the diplomats had agreed that North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations posed a serious threat to peace and security in the region. They also agreed to further strengthen their trilateral cooperation and policy coordination to counter these repeated provocations.