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US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has welcomed an agreement by Defence Chiefs of South Korea and Japan to take measures to prevent the recurrence of a 2018 maritime spat over Japanese patrol aircraft. 

South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik and his Japanese counterpart, Minoru Kihara, announced the agreement on Saturday after their talks held on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, in a deal that could remove a major hindrance to efforts to strengthen bilateral military cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo, Yonhap news agency reported.

In a statement, Austin said on Saturday that the deal between South Korea and Japan would "strengthen their bilateral defence relationship, including measures to support operational safety and lines of communication".

"Stronger bilateral cooperation between each of our countries helps advance trilateral cooperation among all of our countries," he added.

The Defence Chiefs of South Korea, the US and Japan were set to hold a meeting on the sidelines of the security forum in Singapore.

The dispute flared up in December 2018, when a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft made an unusually low-altitude flyby over a South Korean warship. Seoul decried the plane's approach as a "menacing" flight, while Tokyo has accused the South Korean vessel of having locked its fire-control radar on the plane.

The incident had remained a source of friction for years until Seoul and Tokyo's Defence Chiefs agreed to begin working-level talks on the issue at the annual security forum held in Singapore last year, in what marked the first defence ministerial talks between Seoul and Tokyo since November 2019.