Japan, China, S. Korea hold disaster-readiness talks

KOBE (Kyodo) Japan, China and South Korea agreed at a ministerial meeting in Kobe on Saturday to cooperate more in preparing for typhoons, earthquakes and other major disasters.

The ministerial meeting, which was the first of its kind, was attended by Seiji Maehara, state minister in charge of disaster prevention, Luo Pingfei, China's vice minister of civil affairs, and Park Yeon Soo, administrator of South Korea's National Emergency Management Agency.

The three agreed to increase exchanges of disaster-preparedness officials and share information on ways to strengthen buildings and facilities against earthquakes.

Typhoons are said to be getting bigger and stronger a result of global warming, and all three countries are prone to earthquakes.

Maehara, Luo and Park also agreed to hold regular meetings like those that followed the magnitude-8.0 earthquake that hit China's Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008, leaving more than 88,000 people dead.

The meeting originated at a trilateral summit in Fukuoka in December 2008 where then Prime Minister Taro Aso, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak agreed to hold it in Kobe, which was devastated by the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.