Defense Minister Koizumi Visits South Korea...Visits Black Eagles Unit with Minister An Gyu-baek

Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited Korea on June 27 to attend the Korea-Japan Defense Ministerial Meeting. It has been 11 years since a Japanese Defense Minister last visited South Korea for a bilateral meeting, with the previous instance occurring in 2015.

Arriving for a two-day visit, Minister Koizumi began his schedule by paying respects at the Seoul National Cemetery. In the afternoon, he visited the Air Force base in Wonju with Defense Minister An Gyu-baek, where they encouraged the members of the Black Eagles aerobatic team and boarded a T-50B aircraft. The Black Eagles previously received aerial refueling support from the Japan Air Self-Defense Force's Naha base for the first time during their participation in a defense exhibition in Saudi Arabia this January.

On the 27th, Defense Minister An Gyu-baek and Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited the Air Force Black Eagles unit, where Minister An was delivering an encouragement speech. Photo by Yonhap News

Minister Koizumi expressed his commitment to deepening Korea-Japan defense cooperation via his social media account (X).

The Korea-Japan Defense Ministerial Meeting will be held on the morning of June 28 at the Ministry of National Defense headquarters in Seoul. This comes about a month after their bilateral meeting during the Shangri-La Dialogue, the Asia Security Summit, in Singapore last month. After the meeting, both ministers are scheduled to hold a dialogue with the younger generation of both countries at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.