Military leaders of South Korea and the United States will hold a meeting this week to discuss their joint defense posture against North Korean threats and the future joint operation structure, military officers said Wednesday.

South Korean Army Gen. Jung Seung-jo, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his U.S. counterpart, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, will sit down via a video conference for the 37th Military Committee Meeting on Thursday.

During the annual meeting, they are expected to review joint defense capabilities against North Korea amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula after a series of the North’s warlike rhetoric and actions following fresh U.N. sanctions against its Feb. 12 nuclear test and the Seoul-Washington annual military drills in March.

Right after the meeting, the two military chiefs plan to issue a joint statement on the security situation on the Korean Peninsula, according to the officers.

Jung had initially planned to fly to Washington to jointly preside over the crucial defense talks, but the two sides decided to meet via a video conference considering the unstable situation on the peninsula.

“The MCM meeting will serve as a venue for the allies to assess the current security circumstances here and review their defense capabilities,” said a JCS officer.

“Also on the table will be the combined command structure after the transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean forces from Washington to Seoul.”

The Combined Forces Command is expected to be dissolved when Seoul regains its wartime operational command (OPCON) in December 2015. The two sides have worked on the development of an alternative joint operation structure by establishing a new body.

About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, rather than a peace treaty, and left the two Koreas technically at war. (Yonhap News)