President Joe Biden aims to further tighten security and economic ties between Japan and South Korea, two nations that have struggled to stay on speaking terms, as he welcomes their leaders to the rustic Camp David presidential retreat today
Historically frosty relations between South Korea and Japan have rapidly thawed over the last year as they share concerns about China’s assertiveness in the Pacific and North Korea’s persistent nuclear threats.
Biden is now looking to use the summit in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains to urge South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to turn the page on their countries’ difficult shared history.
The Japan-South Korea relationship is a delicate one because of differing views of World War II history and Japan’s colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. Past efforts to tighten security cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo have progressed with fits and starts.
But the White House is hoping the current rapprochement offers an opportunity for a historic shift in the relationship.
”We have entered a new and more ambitious era of trilateral partnership,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday. She added that Yoon and Kishida “have seized the moment” and are ushering in a “new era” for their countries.
The leaders will announce in their summit communique a series of joint efforts that aim to “institutionalize” cooperation among the three countries as they face an increasingly complicated Pacific, according to a senior Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss summit planning.
The idea, the official added, is to formalise cooperation on issues of defence, technology and beyond, making it as “irreversible as possible” for the three countries to back away from cooperation on significant issues in the years to come. Among the expected major announcements are plans to expand military cooperation on ballistic defenses and technology development.
“The world is changing rapidly, and I think this is apparent to both the Japanese and South Koreans,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In picking Camp David, where presidents over 80 years have hosted historic peace summits and intimate leader-to-leader talks, Biden is looking to demonstrate the importance of relations with South Korea and Japan.