South Korea's defence minister heads to Cebu for a first meeting with Hegseth after 36 days without a call

South Korean Defence Minister Kang Shin-chul is travelling to the Philippines for the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus, where Seoul is arranging his first in-person meeting with US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The defence ministry in Seoul announced on 27 October that Kang would attend the 13th ADMM-Plus in Cebu on 29 October and leave for the meeting the same day.

The Cebu gathering brings together defence ministers or their representatives from the 11 ASEAN member states and eight dialogue partners, including South Korea, the United States, China and Japan. It is the first multilateral security conference Kang has attended since he took office on 22 September, and bilateral talks between the main regional ministers are expected on the sidelines, the ministry said. The US Department of War announced Hegseth's attendance on 25 October, Washington time.

No phone call since taking office

The planned encounter would come without the two men having spoken by telephone. The Chosun Ilbo reported that Kang had gone 36 days without a phone call with Hegseth, even as North Korean troops set off a landmine in the Demilitarised Zone and Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korea's leader, issued threats against the South. According to the newspaper, Kang is the only South Korean defence minister since the 2000s to go that long after taking office without a call with his American counterpart. Most of his predecessors held one within a month, it said, noting that Song Young-moo spoke with then US Defense Secretary James Mattis on his 35th day in office in July 2017.

Kang was asked at the National Assembly defence committee's comprehensive audit on 26 October whether he would see Hegseth in Cebu. He replied that the meeting was being arranged, and added that when ministers meet on the margins of a multilateral conference, the schedule is usually confirmed only after they arrive, Yonhap News Agency and The Asia Business Daily reported.

Wartime control and the DMZ on the agenda

South Korean media expect the meeting to serve mainly as an introduction, but a heavy list of alliance issues awaits. The most sensitive is the transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean forces, which the current government in Seoul wants to accelerate and on which the two allies have differing views, according to Yonhap and the Chosun Ilbo. A diplomatic and security source told the Chosun Ilbo that the key question was whether the two ministers could communicate in depth on such issues without having held a call first.

Kang also intends to use the ADMM-Plus plenary to explain the South Korean government's efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and to seek support from the other participants, the defence ministry said. Yonhap said it would be watched whether he sets out Seoul's position on the recent rise in tension along the Military Demarcation Line inside the DMZ. The Chosun Ilbo reported that he plans to tell the conference that North Korea's landmine provocation was unjust.

Beyond the United States, Kang plans to meet other regional defence ministers to discuss expanding defence exchanges and defence industry cooperation, and to propose practical ways of deepening defence cooperation with ASEAN, the ministry said. Ministers at the meeting are also expected to assess the regional security environment and discuss cooperation for peace and stability.