As threats grow in Asia, the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea will meet at Camp David on Friday, taking a major step toward a three-way military and economic partnership that was almost unimaginable before the invasion of Russia in Ukraine.
As the United States has tried to counter challenges from both China and North Korea, a major obstacle has been the tense and sometimes downright hostile relationship between Japan and South Korea, its two most important friends in the region.
Now, Tokyo and Seoul are trying to quickly overcome seemingly insurmountable disputes over the bitter history between them, as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine exposes their own vulnerabilities in a region dominated by China.
President Biden hopes to cement the budding improvement in relations when he hosts Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the Maryland presidential retreat. It was the first time the leaders of the three countries had met outside the context of a larger summit, as well as the first time Mr. Biden had invited world leaders to Camp David.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this week that the meeting will give the three heads of state an opportunity to talk about concrete steps towards maintaining peace and stability in the region.
That’s diplomatic speak for “the need for a response to challenges coming from China,” said Tetsuo Kotani, a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.
But Russia will hide in the background of the meeting, Mr. Kotani said. Moscow’s attempt to take over Ukraine by force has sharpened the focus on Beijing’s threats to do the same in Taiwan. It also raised concerns about the growing alignment between China, Russia and North Korea, all nuclear powers.
The emergence of what North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, calls a “neo-Cold War” around the Korean Peninsula was on display last month. Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Li Hongzhong, a member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, stood with Mr. Kim in Pyongyang at a military parade featuring nuclear-capable missiles developed by North Korea in defiance of the United States and the UN Security Council.
Last month’s trilateral missile drills between the United States, Japan and South Korea in the sea between the two Asian countries were followed by military training between China and Russia in nearby waters.
The gathering sense of threat has undermined complacency in Seoul and Tokyo that has hindered the formation of a tighter three-way partnership with the United States, which has recognized for years that it cannot counter China alone. And it pushed both Asian capitals to play a more active role in Europe, where they provided aid to Ukraine and pursued closer ties with NATO.
“The situation in our part of the world is getting worse, worse than many expected,” said Kunihiko Miyake, the director of research at the Canon Institute of Global Studies.
The meeting at Camp David is an opportunity to consolidate and institutionalize the progress Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have made over the past year in tightening their ranks, officials from the countries said.
The United States has spent decades fruitlessly trying to get Japan and South Korea to cooperate on security issues. And there is an awareness in all three countries that the progress that has been made is fragile.
Mr. Yoon’s efforts to improve ties with Japan have fueled public anger ahead of a legislative election in April. Mr. Kishida, has a weak political position at home, where mismanagement of domestic issues has hurt his popularity, and where more conservative politicians are wary of anti-Japanese sentiment in Seoul. Both Asian countries are concerned that US cooperation promises could be withdrawn if Donald J. Trump is elected president next year.
With that in mind, one of the main objectives of the meeting is to embed cooperation mechanisms “in the DNA” of the three governments and “create a new normal” that will be difficult to return, Rahm Emanuel, the ambassador of US in Japan, said in a recent interview.
Kim Tae-hyo, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Yoon, the South Korean administration hopes the summit will “establish a basic structure of trilateral cooperation and institutionalize it.”
The most visible manifestation is likely to be a commitment to hold an annual meeting with the three heads of state. More practically, officials are expected to announce expanded cooperation not only in joint military training and military information sharing, but also in artificial intelligence, supply chains and cyber and economic security.
The three heads of state will also discuss concrete steps to counter North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, Mr. Kim said.
Since taking office last year, Mr. Yoon has emphasized improving ties with Japan and aligning South Korea more closely with Washington and Tokyo in dealing with China, Russia and North Korea.
Under Mr. Yoon, South Korea restored and expanded joint military exercises with the United States and joined exercises with the United States and Japan to track and intercept missiles from North Korea.
In a speech on Tuesday marking the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan at the end of World War II, Mr. Yoon avoided discussing his country’s historical grievances in Tokyo, emphasizing instead the benefits of cooperation.
The Camp David summit, he said, “will set a new milestone in trilateral cooperation that contributes to peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region.”
Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Yoon took steps to resolve a simmering controversy over Japan’s use of Korean forced labor during the war. That opened the door for an exchange of visits between Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kishida and the return of Japanese sanctions on Korea’s semiconductor industry.
As a gesture of goodwill, Mr. Kishida also halted the release of treated radioactive water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant until after the summit. The subject is a lightning rod in South Korea.
Not all South Koreans were happy with Mr. Yoon. His domestic critics are taking issue with what they describe as Japan’s failure to properly pay for its brutal colonial rule. They fear that Mr. Yoon’s efforts to deepen military cooperation between the United States, Japan and South Korea will only increase tensions — and the chances of war — on the Korean Peninsula.
As for China, it may seek its own meetings in Tokyo and Seoul in response to the Camp David summit, said Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
But, he added, if there are “significant actions that are not in China’s favor,” Beijing could make a “pretty tough response.”
Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, warned Japan and South Korea last month against aligning themselves too closely with the United States. “No matter how yellow your hair, or how pointed your nose, you will never be a European or an American, you will never be a Westerner,” said Mr. Wang.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warned the three countries against forming “cliques,” adding that Beijing is “opposed to the practice of intensifying confrontation and undermining the strategic security of other countries .”
The possibility of Beijing’s economic retaliation is a serious concern for both South Korea and Japan, which count China as their largest trading partner.
Both countries are “concerned with the idea of a new Cold War, an economic war with China,” said Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in international policy at Stanford University.
“But they still have to navigate trying to find a balance between engagement and competition and confrontation,” he said.
Ben Dooley reports from Tokyo, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul. Claire Fu contributed reporting from Seoul.
