Aug. 18 (UPI) — President Joe Biden will host a summit at Camp David Friday that will bring together the leaders of Japan and South Korea in an effort to heal old wounds and unite the frayed allies in response to increasing military threats in Southeast Asia.
The summit is scheduled to get underway at 11 a.m., with Biden sitting down with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol for about 4 hours in a first-ever trilateral meeting between the world powers, the White House said.
The three leaders are scheduled to emerge from the private chat about 3 p.m., at which time they will hold a joint press conference before Biden heads off in the evening to Reno, Nev., for a vacation on Lake Tahoe.
The summit marks the first time any foreign dignitaries have visited Camp David since 2015, and comes as the United States and South Korea prepare to hold joint military drills next week as North Korea was threatening to test another ballistic missile.
The annual defense exercise — known as the Ulchi Freedom Shield — includes live field maneuvers, computer-simulated exercises and civil defense drills, and will be conducted over ten days starting Aug. 21.
The thaw in relations between Japan and South Korea comes in the face of growing nuclear threats from North Korea and an increasingly assertive China, which have escalated provocations throughout the Indo-Pacific in recent months.
Biden met previously with Kishida and Yoon in May on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, where they reaffirmed commitments to settling tensions in the region as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were forming a tighter alliance amid the war in Ukraine.
At the time, Biden and Kishida agreed to continue supporting Ukraine against Russia and committed to work more closely to address regional security challenges, including North Korea’s nuclear program and actions by China that continued to flout international law.
Washington has long been pushing for closer cooperation among its allies in the region in light of a shifting balance of power across the globe, and Xi vowing to take steps toward “reunification” with Taiwan during his third term, which started in March.
Trilateral defense and intelligence-sharing activities have ramped up in recent months, with Biden signing strategic agreements with several Asian nations while shoring up military installations in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
In July, North Korea and China reaffirmed their alliance in a high-level meeting in Pyongyang, in which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hosted a Chinese delegation led by politburo member Li Hongzhong.
Since the meeting, Kim has vowed to make “stronger military offensives” against the United States, while backing up the threat by continuing to test-fire missiles in the region.
Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the upcoming summit as a “new era” of cooperation between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, saying the alliance would serve as a “force multiplier for good” and “promote peace and stability” in Southeast Asia, while the U.S. was committed to “the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
“Together, the leaders will have an opportunity to discuss and to strengthen practical cooperation on a variety of shared priorities, from physical security to economic security, for humanitarian assistance to development finance, from global health to critical and emerging technologies,” he said.
Tensions between Seoul and Tokyo emerged earlier this week as Japan held memorial services to mark 78 years since Japan’s surrender in the war. The South Korean government criticized Kishida after he sent a “masakaki” offering to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo — a controversial site that glorifies military figures who committed atrocities during World War II.
Seoul called for “responsible figures in Japan to face history squarely and to demonstrate humble reflection and genuine remorse for the past.”
Overall relations between the Asian powers, however, were showing signs of improvement after decades of tensions due to unresolved political clashes, territorial disputes, and Japan’s refusal to compensate for forced colonial labor during the war.
In late June, Japan and South Korea held an economic summit for the first time since 2016, agreeing to reestablish currency exchanges in a further sign of reconciliation between the allies after Japan said it would reinstate South Korea to its “white list” of preferred trade partners after a four-year absence.
