TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan and the European Union on Friday agreed on the Security and Defense Partnership, pledging to boost cooperation in maritime security and other areas, as they share concerns over increasingly provocative Chinese military activities in the Indo-Pacific region.

The agreement was jointly released by Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and EU foreign and security policy chief Josep Borrell ahead of the first-ever foreign ministerial "Japan-EU Strategic Dialogue" in Tokyo.

In the document, Tokyo and the 27-member regional bloc vowed to promote joint exercises between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the European Union Naval Force and "explore the possibility" of concluding a pact for security information exchanges.

They also affirmed to further reinforce collaboration in cyberspace, outer space, nonproliferation and countermeasures against disinformation while launching annual director general-level security and defense dialogue.

Calling ties between Europe and the Indo-Pacific region "highly interconnected and interdependent," the partnership document said Japan and the EU "face an increasingly challenging and interlinked security environment as demonstrated by unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force."

"Japan and the EU, as strategic partners, will continue to closely work together on challenges that the international community face," Iwaya told a joint press event, while Borrell said their partnership will serve as "only one antidote to this challenging world."

It is the first such partnership agreement for the EU with an Indo-Pacific nation, according to Iwaya and Borrell.

Japan and European countries have been stepping up security collaboration in recent years amid China's increasing maritime assertiveness in the East and South China seas and Russia's prolonged full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.

Earlier on Friday, Borrell met with Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, and they condemned North Korea's launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile the previous day.

North Korea's repeated firing of missiles is "a threat not only to regional security but also a serious challenge to the entire international community," Nakatani told Borrell at the outset of their meeting.

The missile, identified by Pyongyang as the latest "Hwasong-19," logged 86 minutes of flight time and reached an altitude of over 7,000 kilometers, both records for a North Korean missile, before falling outside Japan's exclusive economic zone west of Hokkaido.