Defense ministry officials from China and South Korea convene in Beijing on Feb. 5, 2026, for the countries’ 21st working-level policy meeting. (South Korea Ministry of National Defense)
China and South Korea have discussed resuming joint maritime search-and-rescue drills that have been suspended for about 15 years, according to the South’s Ministry of National Defense.
Working-level policy talks between officials from both nations’ defense ministries took place Thursday in Beijing, according to a news release issued by the South Korean ministry that day.
China and South Korea began the humanitarian drills in the Yellow Sea — known was the West Sea on the Korean Peninsula — in 2005. Follow-on exercises were held in 2007, 2008 and 2022 before the series was curtailed, according to a Thursday report by Yonhap News Agency.
The exercises ended in a period of strained relations between the two countries following a strengthened U.S.-South Korea exercise and the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system from the United States, according to Jan. 8 report by the Kukmin Ilbo.
The drills were intended to promote humanitarian maritime cooperation, improve safety and expand military exchanges aimed at strengthening relations, the report said.
Thursday’s talks were led by Lee Kwang-suk, director general of South Korea’s Defense Ministry International Policy Bureau, and his Chinese counterpart, Guo Hongtao, according to the news release.
Lee urged China to play a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula and outlined South Korea’s concerns over Chinese military activity in the Korea Air Defense Identification Zone, the ministry said.
Those concerns followed a Dec. 9 incident in which nine Chinese and Russian military aircraft — fighters, bombers and a surveillance plane — entered the zone. South Korea scrambled its own fighters and lodged formal protests with military officials from both countries.
China’s defense ministry later described the flight with Russia as its 10th joint strategic air patrol over the East China Sea and Western Pacific.
Thursday’s meeting marked the first in-person working-level defense talks between Seoul and Beijing in four years. The last such engagement was an online meeting in June 2022, according to the South Korean ministry’s release. The two sides first began holding working-level defense talks in 1995.
Officials agreed to restore defense cooperation, expand its scope and revive dormant channels for strategic military communication through continued discussions, the release said.
The ministry said it hopes the talks will rebuild defense exchanges “based on horizontal and reciprocal principles between both countries and lay the foundation of trust between the militaries.”
The announcement came a week after South Korea and Japan agreed to resume joint naval search-and-rescue exercises for the first time in nine years. That series, which began in 1999, was suspended in 2017 amid strained relations between the two countries.
