INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS | US, JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA

CAMP DAVID, Md. — President Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea agreed Friday to expand security and economic ties at a historic summit at the U.S. presidential retreat of Camp David.

Their meeting and agreement come at a time that all three countries are on an increasingly tense ledge in their relations with China and North Korea.

Biden said the three nations would establish a communications hotline to discuss responses to threats. He announced the agreements, including what the leaders termed the "Camp David Principles," at the close of his talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

"The purpose of our trilateral security cooperation is and will remain to promote and enhance peace and stability throughout the region," they said in a joint statement.

"Our countries are stronger and the world will be safer as we stand together. And I know this is a belief that all three share," Biden said as he opened the meeting.

Biden maintained, as have U.S., South Korean and Japanese officials, that the summit "was not about China" but was focused on broader security issues.

Yoon noted in particular the threat posed by North Korea, saying the three leaders agreed to improve "our joint response capabilities to North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, which have become sophisticated more than ever."

He said as the three appeared before reporters that "today will be remembered as a historic day, where we established a firm institutional basis and commitments to the trilateral partnership."

Japan's Kishida said before the private 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."

Security pledge

The U.S., Japan and South Korea agreed to a new "duty to consult" security pledge committing them to speak with each other in the event of a security crisis or threat in the Pacific.

The pledge is intended to acknowledge that they share "fundamentally interlinked security environments" and that a threat to one is "a threat to all," according to a senior Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Under the pledge, the three countries agree to consult, share information and align their messaging with each other in the face of a threat or crisis, the official said.

Biden's focus for the gathering was to nudge the United States' two closest Asian allies to further tighten security and economic cooperation with each other. The historic rivals have been divided by differing views of World War II history and Japan's colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

But under Kishida and Yoon, the two countries have begun a rapprochement as the two conservative leaders grapple with shared security challenges posed by North Korea and China.

Both leaders have been upset by the stepped-up cadence of North Korea's ballistic missile tests and Chinese military exercises near Taiwan, the self-ruled island that is claimed by Beijing as part of its territory, and other aggressive action.

Yoon proposed an initiative in March to resolve disputes stemming from compensation for wartime Korean forced laborers. He announced that South Korea would use its own funds to compensate Koreans enslaved by Japanese companies before the end of World War II.

Yoon also traveled to Tokyo that month for talks with Kishida, the first such visit by a South Korean president in more than 12 years. Kishida reciprocated with a visit to Seoul in May and expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced laborers during Japan's colonial rule.

Challenges ahead

The effort to sustain the trilateral relationship won't be without challenges.

Beijing sees the tightening cooperation efforts as the first steps of a Pacific-version of NATO, the transatlantic military alliance, forming against it. U.S. officials expect that North Korea will lash out — perhaps with more ballistic missile test and certainly blistering rhetoric.

"The international community has its own judgment as to who is creating contradictions and increasing tensions," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday.

"Attempts to form various exclusive groups and cliques and to bring bloc confrontation into the Asia-Pacific region are unpopular and will definitely spark vigilance and opposition in the countries of the region," Wang said.