Sentry Staff
South Korean President Yook Suk Yeol, then-Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden held an unprecedented in-person summit in August 2023 at Camp David in Maryland, aimed at deepening relations and addressing geopolitical threats in the region. Analysts see the security agreement as opening the door to greater cooperation and marking a significant step to further ease tensions between Japan and South Korea.
The leaders emerged from the 2023 summit with The Spirit of Camp David joint statement, a list of areas of collaborations, including missile defense, cybersecurity, economic development, human rights, financial integrity and climate change. Central to the joint statement: the importance of countering threats to a stable and open international system from North Korea, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia.
“Our mandate is to ensure Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United States are aligned in our objectives and in our actions, generating the common capacity required to ensure that the Indo-Pacific is thriving, connected, resilient, stable and secure,” the joint statement read. “Ours is a partnership built not just for our people but for the entire Indo-Pacific.”
“Our countries are stronger, and the world will be safer as we stand together,” President Biden said in a news conference after the summit. “And I know this is a belief that all three share.”
The U.S. has long-standing bilateral relations and treaties with Japan and South Korea. Increased collaboration between Japan and South Korea is necessitated, at least in part, by the current security environment, said Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “The Russian invasion of Ukraine, China’s assertiveness against Taiwan and unlawful territorial claims, as well as North Korea’s unending nuclear missile campaign has affected Seoul and Tokyo’s threat perceptions,” Cha said in a CSIS report published after the summit. Indeed, Japan in December 2023 announced its largest military buildup since World War II.
The summit’s main objective was to institutionalize cooperation among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, said Christopher B. Johnstone, senior advisor and Japan chair at CSIS.
“The history of trilateral cooperation is something of a pendulum, with periods of progress in ties that are swiftly reversed after changes in the security environment or in political leadership. The announcements at Camp David represent an effort to institutionalize ties and reduce the risk of history repeating itself,” Johnstone said in the CSIS report.
We are fully committed to continuing to eliminate barriers to economic participation and build diverse, accessible, and inclusive economies in which all our people — including women and marginalized groups — can succeed.”
― Spirit of Camp David joint statement
Actions from the joint statement include:
- Agreement to quickly collaborate on responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats.
- Enhanced real-time sharing of missile warning data from North Korea.
- Meetings with the countries’ leaders, foreign ministers, defense ministers and national security advisors are to be held least once a year.
- An annual trilateral Indo-Pacific Dialogue to coordinate implementation of goals and identify new areas for common action.
- Annual trilateral exercises to better coordinate the countries’ different military capabilities.
- Development of strategies to counter disinformation.
- Continued support of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Pacific Island Countries.
- A trilateral maritime security cooperation framework, opening the door for the Coast Guards of all three nations to regularly conduct joint exercises.
The three nations also reaffirmed their commitment to Ukraine. “We commit to continue providing assistance to Ukraine, imposing coordinated, robust sanctions on Russia and accelerating the reduction of dependency on Russian energy,” the joint statement read. “We believe the lasting lesson from this catastrophic war of aggression must be the international community’s abiding will to uphold the principles of territorial integrity, sovereignty and the peaceful resolution of disputes.”
Momentum toward the summit grew largely at the initiative from Yoon to improve relations with Japan, prompted by threats posed by North Korea and the PRC. Yoon now calls Japan “a partner that shares the same universal values,” while Kishida views South Korea as “an important neighboring country that we should work with,” The New York Times newspaper reported in May 2023.
Kishida said before the talks that “the fact that we, the three leaders, have got together in this way, I believe means that we are indeed making a new history as of today. The international community is at a turning point in history.”
Beyond security
The joint statements that emerged from the trilateral summit go beyond detecting and countering military threats. On the economic front, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. said they will work to improve supply chain resilience, particularly on semiconductors and batteries, clean energy, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. They also pledged to work together to protect new technology and counter economic coercion.
The countries will pursue new trilateral cooperation among national laboratories and expand collaborative research and development and personnel exchanges, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics sectors.
“In addition, we seek to expand trilateral cooperation on open radio access network (technology) and further enhance trilateral dialogue on space security cooperation, particularly regarding threats in the space domain, national space strategies, and the responsible use of space,” the joint statement read.
In one collaborative project, Korea-based Samsung Electronics will build a $222 million research and development facility in Yokohama, Japan, leveraging the two countries’ expertise in the chip industry, Nikkei Asia news magazine reported in May 2023. The facility is expected to start operating in 2025 and could spur more collaboration between the chip industries of the two countries, Nikkei Asia reported.
The joint statement also called for the countries to work together to mobilize financing for quality infrastructure and resilient supply chains, including through trilateral collaboration among their development finance institutions as well as through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, the Group of Seven’s flagship infrastructure initiative for low- and middle-income countries, a competitor to Beijing’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure scheme.
“We are fully committed to continuing to eliminate barriers to economic participation and build diverse, accessible, and inclusive economies in which all our people — including women and marginalized groups — can succeed,” the joint statement read.
Ours is a partnership built not just for our people but for the entire Indo-Pacific.”
― Spirit of Camp David joint statement
Beijing, Pyongyang push back
North Korea and the PRC met news of the Japan-South Korea-U.S. summit with negativity. Within days of the summit, North Korea said the Camp David agreements were aimed at formulating a “nuclear war provocation,” Reuters reported in August 2023, quoting a commentary published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang has increased its missile tests and artillery firing drills, and regime leader Kim Jong Un said North Korea would no longer seek peaceful reunification with South Korea, and repeated his vow to “annihilate” South Korea and the U.S. if provoked.
The PRC claimed the summit had “smeared and attacked” Beijing over its moves in the South China Sea and Taiwan, The Japan Times newspaper reported in August 2023. “If relevant countries do care about peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, they need to abide by the ‘One China principle,’ stop conniving at or supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces and their activities, and protect regional peace and stability through concrete action,” a Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman said.
In April 2024, the PRC hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and sent its third-ranking leader to North Korea, signaling enhanced cooperation among those countries, The Diplomat magazine reported. In May 2024, Wang Yi, the PRC’s foreign affairs minister, warned South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae Yul that “difficulties and challenges facing South Korea-China relations have clearly increased,” because of South Korea’s strengthened relationship with Japan and the U.S.
‘A new chapter’
Japan, South Korea and the U.S. have already begun to deliver on pledges made after the summit to strengthen stability in the Indo-Pacific. In October 2023, the Allies held two trilateral exercises, one maritime and one aerial. The aerial exercise took place near the Korean Peninsula and included fighter jets from Japan and South Korea and a U.S. Air Force nuclear-capable B-52 bomber. The B-52 was the first such aircraft to land in South Korea in decades, The Associated Press reported.
In November 2023, the nations’ defense chiefs agreed on a mechanism to facilitate the exchange of real-time missile warning data and enhance each countries’ capabilities to monitor North Korean missile launches.
In May 2024, the ROK and the U.S. flew fighter jets in an aerial exercise over the central region of South Korea, demonstrating the systems’ interoperability.
The first trilateral Indo-Pacific dialogue occurred in January 2024 and was attended by Japanese Deputy Minister/Director-General Kobe Yasuhiro, South Korean Deputy Minister Chung Byung-won and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink. The three discussed collaboration opportunities focused on partnering with Southeast Asian and Pacific Island Countries, according to a U.S. State Department statement released after the meeting. They reaffirmed their opposition to threats to a stable and open international system from Beijing and Pyongyang and North Korea’s growing military cooperation with Russia. The three leaders also discussed ways to counter misinformation while respecting freedom of expression.
“The trilateral Indo-Pacific Dialogue is a new chapter in our countries’ partnership and an important step forward to strengthen and more closely align our policies globally,” the statement read. “Assistant Secretary Kritenbrink, Deputy Minister / Director-General Kobe, and Deputy Minister Chung reaffirmed their intent to continue to hold the trilateral dialogue annually and coordinate closely on issues of shared concern in the Indo-Pacific.”