The South Korean and Philippine defense chiefs signed an accord Monday to regulate and protect exchanges of classified military information on regional security, including on potential hostilities between the rival Koreas.
The Philippine defense department said the five-year accord signed by South Korean Defense Minister Han Minkoo and Secretary Voltaire Gazmin would enable the Manila government to be better informed of developments on the Korean Peninsula to protect thousands of Filipino workers in the tense region.
The “safety and repatriation of Filipinos residing in the Republic of Korea will be the Philippines’ paramount concern when such contingency erupts between the two Koreas,” the Philippine defense department said in a statement.
About 50,000 Filipinos live and work in South Korea, and a few are in the North. About a tenth of the Philippines’ more than 100 million people have left the poor Southeast Asian nation in search of better jobs and opportunities, and many had been trapped in armed conflicts in recent years, including in the Middle East. Details