An unexpected third face-to-face meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday underscored that Japan is entirely out of the loop on the denuclearization issue amid the fraying of its ties with the South.

Some Japanese government officials indicated they had not obtained information in advance about whether Trump and Kim would really meet, as their talks at the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas appear to have been arranged by the South.

Shawn Ho, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said, “For the foreseeable future, it does not appear that there will be a possibility of Japan coming into the picture” over Korean issues.