Page 214 - Trilateral Korea Japan U.S. Cooperation

and the general public around China’s aspirations for
preeminence and its threatening behavior has been the
willingness of the top leadership in each country to join
together in a declaratory statement of common aims at
Phnom Penh in November of 2022. This was followed by a
courageous decision by South Korean President Yoon Suk-
Yeol to pursue normalization of the Japan-South Korea
relationship and the successful holding of the Camp David
summit in August of 2023. That meeting attempted to forge
a joint acknowledgment of common purpose among the
three leaders and to provide guidance for comprehensive
institutionalization of cooperation in a wide variety of areas.
These extend beyond security to regionwide infrastructure
financing, infrastructure, and international development aims
in Southeast Asia. These would include include cooperation on
economic security, supply chain resiliency, and joint research
and development of critical and emerging technologies.

North Korea has remained a proximate threat that has driven
the binding of defense efforts to achieve combined real-time
tracking of North Korean missiles and unity of purpose on
sanctions enforcement efforts. However China has been the
driver for expanded and deepening U.S.-Japan-South Korea
cooperation across a much wider range of areas.

The institutionalization of the U.S.-Japan-South Korea
trilateral coalition naturally raises the question of how North
Korea and its primary patrons China and Russia might
respond, particularly in the context of deepening major
power rivalry across the region. Certainly, there is now a
wide gap in U.S.-Japan-South Korean versus Chinese and

214 Section III : South Korea-Japan-U.S. Cooperation: How to Deter Pyongyang and Dissuade Beijing