Biden seeks to strengthen ties between South Korea and Japan at Camp David.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Yoon Suk Yeol, the South Korean president, did not linger on the harsh 35-year occupation his people underwent under their neighbor as he honored his country’s independence from Japan this week.

Instead, the 62-year-old leader, who was too young to understand the humiliations of Japanese control, praised the country as a “partner” who now shares the same values and interests as it. In the face of North Korean nuclear threats, which are a persistent source of concern for both Seoul and Tokyo, Yoon saved his censure for “Communist aggression.”

The Biden administration thinks that in East Asia, a seismic but delicate realignment is taking place: a closer partnership between two important US allies with a long history of mutual acrimony and distrust. The shift would hasten Washington’s efforts to undermine China’s regional influence.

This Friday, US President Joe Biden aims to strengthen such ties at Camp David, the renowned presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.

While the summit is unlikely to result in a formal security agreement committing the states to each other’s protection, they will reach an agreement on regional obligations.

“I find the meeting at Camp David mind blowing,” Dennis Wilder, a Georgetown University professor who formerly supervised the connection between Japan and South Korea under former President George W. Bush, posted on the social networking site X. “We could barely get South Korean and Japanese leaders to meet with us in the same room.”

According to diplomats from the three nations, the reason for the softening tensions is a common worry about an increasingly muscular China and an unstable North Korea.

They do, however, acknowledge Yoon and Kishida’s personal initiative in pursuing closer connections.

Yoon’s attempt to break the deadlock has generated “important momentum” for more collaboration, according to South Korean deputy national security advisor Kim Tae-hyo, who added that the three leaders will spend the “longest time together ever” at Camp David.