SEOUL, May 7 (Xinhua) -- South Korea, the United States and Japan will hold the annual trilateral security talks later this week in Seoul, local media reported Tuesday citing South Korean defense ministry.

The 11th round of Defense Trilateral Talks (DTT) will be held on Thursday in the headquarters of South Korea's defense ministry in Seoul. The DTT was launched in 2008 to discuss regional security issues, including the nuclear and missile programs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The meeting will be attended by South Korean Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy Chung Suk-hwan, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver and Takeshi Ishikawa, director general for defense policy of Japan.

During the talks, the three sides will discuss the denuclearization of and the settlement of permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula, regional security situations and the trilateral defense cooperation, the ministry said.

It would come after the DPRK fired several short-range projectiles Saturday morning into the sea from its east coast city of Wonsan.

South Korean defense ministry saw the projectile launches as a live-fire exercise by the DPRK, not a provocation.