U.S. President Joe Biden will host a trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea on Aug. 18, the White House said Friday, as he seeks to work even more closely with the two Asian countries over North Korea and other key issues.
The summit between Biden, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol will be held at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, according to the White House.
"The three leaders will discuss expanding trilateral cooperation across the Indo-Pacific and beyond" including to address the continued threat posed by North Korea and to strengthen ties with ASEAN and the Pacific islands, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
"The summit will advance a shared trilateral vision for addressing global and regional security challenges, promoting a rules-based international order and bolstering economic prosperity," the statement said.
The plan for the three-way summit was announced at a time when North Korea is showing no signs of restraint in its test-launching of ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, including solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles in April and earlier in July.
ICBMs powered by solid fuel could pose a bigger threat to the U.S. mainland as the loading of liquid fuel prior to launch would be unnecessary, speeding up the timeline of a planned firing and making it harder to detect.
The three governments are working toward a joint statement to be released at the planned summit, with condemnation of North Korea's ICBM test-launches and other military activities as well as a call for Pyongyang to return to denuclearization talks likely to be included, according to diplomatic sources.
It will be the first standalone summit between the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea, though they have held trilateral meetings on the fringes of international conferences and on other occasions.
The leaders last met together in May in Hiroshima on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit.
But the previous three-way meeting lasted for just a couple of minutes amid a jam-packed schedule for the leaders. Biden at the time invited Kishida and Yoon to the United States for their official summit.
Japan and South Korea are major allies of the United States in Asia. The momentum for closer trilateral relations got a boost in March when Yoon made the first visit to Tokyo by a South Korean leader in many years, agreeing with Kishida to move on from a long-festering dispute over wartime conscripted labor.
As Japan and South Korea have been restoring their relations since then, the neighboring countries' policy coordination together with the United States has been expanding beyond issues concerning North Korea to include areas ranging from Russia's war against Ukraine to supply chains for critical materials.
