South Korea, the United States and Japan discussed combined military exercises, including missile warning drills, Seoul's defense minister said, after trilateral talks with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Nobuo Kishi, on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday.

It is the first in-person defense ministerial gathering of the three countries since November 2019.

South Korea, the United States and Japan also strongly condemned the repeated "unlawful" ballistic missile launches made by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement.