Biden hosts a summit with Japan and South Korea

US President Joe Biden is scheduled to host a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea on August 18, as reported by Kyodo Newsand North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats are likely to be high on the agenda.

The summit, which will feature Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, is expected to take place at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, near Washington.

The three leaders are considering issuing a joint statement after the planned talks, the sources said.

If the plan goes ahead, it will be the first solo summit between the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea, although they have held trilateral meetings on the sidelines of international conferences and on other occasions.

The most recent meeting of Biden, Kishida and Yoon took place in May, during a G7 summit held in Hiroshima.

But the talks lasted just a few minutes amid a packed schedule. At that time, Biden invited Kishida and Yoon to the United States for an official summit.

The next time the three leaders meet, they are likely to discuss how to deal with North Korea, which has continued to launch ballistic missiles.

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Biden, Kishida and Yoon could discuss a plan to share real-time information on missile launches from the North by the end of this year.

Washington currently has a system connected separately with Tokyo and Seoul to detect and track Pyongyang’s missiles, but its main Asian security allies have no mechanism to immediately share that information.

The momentum for closer trilateral ties increased when Yoon visited Tokyo in March, marking the first visit to Tokyo by a South Korean leader in many years. Yoon and Kishida agreed to put a long-running dispute over wartime manpower recruitment behind them.

As bilateral relations between Japan and South Korea have improved, the two countries have increased political coordination with the United States, broadening it beyond issues relating to North Korea to include areas ranging from Russia’s war against Ukraine to the supply chains of critical materials.