South Korean Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul, left, shakes hands with his Japanese counterpart, Kiyoshi Serizawa, on the margins of the Seoul Defense Dialogue at a hotel in Seoul, Oct. 18, in this photo provided by the defense ministry. Yonhap

Vice defense ministers of South Korea and Japan held talks Wednesday to discuss bolstering security cooperation, Seoul's defense ministry said, amid efforts to step up coordination with the United States against North Korean threats.

Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul sat down with his Japanese counterpart, Kiyoshi Serizawa, on the margins of the Seoul Defense Dialogue, an annual international security forum, marking the first meeting of its kind since September last year.

The two sides agreed to maintain "close" communications to enhance security cooperation, citing the agreement between President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to develop bilateral ties to a higher level during their summit in Seoul in May.

They also agreed to continue consultations to advance bilateral security cooperation in a future-oriented way, while agreeing on the importance of building trust and pushing for various avenues of cooperation, it said.

"This vice ministerial meeting was arranged based on the two sides' shared view on the importance of South Korea-Japan and South Korea-U.S.-Japan security cooperation to deter North Korea's nuclear and missile threats and to enhance regional peace and stability," the ministry said in a release.

Relations between Seoul and Tokyo thawed following the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's decision in March to address the issue of compensating Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor ― long a thorn in bilateral ties. (Yonhap)