Yoon, Biden and Kishida to meet at the NATO Summit

Diplomacy

Published: 26 Jun. 2022, 18:53

Yoon, Biden and Kishida to meet at the NATO Summit

From left: President Yoon Suk-yeol, U.S. President Joe Biden, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will hold a rare meeting at the NATO summit in Madrid on Wednesday afternoon. [YONHAP]

President Yoon Suk-yeol, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will meet at the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday afternoon, according to a presidential official on Sunday.

The scheduled meeting is the first to take place between leaders of the three countries in four years and nine months since the Hamburg summit between then-President Moon Jae-in, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September 2017.

During the meeting, they are expected to explore ways the three countries can strengthen cooperation in response to the North Korean nuclear threat, check increasingly aggressive Chinese military actions in the western Pacific and smooth over relations between South Korea and Japan.

NATO members at the Madrid summit are likely to adopt a new "strategic concept" aimed at China and Russia. At the summit last year, the organization said China is a "systematic challenge" and Russia a "threat."

South Korea and Japan, which are both invited to this year's summit as NATO "Asian partners" along with Australia and New Zealand, have steadily increased joint security-related contacts and exchanges with the United States since Yoon's inauguration, with their senior North Korea affairs officials meeting in Seoul on June 3, vice foreign ministers holding talks in Seoul on June 8, and their defense chiefs meeting at the annual Shangri-la defense dialogue in Singapore on June 11.

Without meeting, the top diplomats of the three countries issued a statement on May 27 condemning North Korea for its recent ballistic missile tests.

Beijing has made clear its opposition to Asian countries participating in the NATO summit, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin noting on June 23 that "the Asia-Pacific is beyond the geographical scope of the North Atlantic," and that "countries and people in the Asia-Pacific are strongly opposed to anything said or done to extend military bloc to this region or stir up division and confrontation."

U.S. National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby responded by saying that China has no authority to veto which meeting South Korea will attend.

Close attention is being paid as to whether the trilateral meeting in Madrid will result in a new statement committing the allies to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons program, or even a plan to promote expanded deterrence — which has already been promised at the bilateral level between Korea and United States and between Japan and the United States.

The first statement from the three leaders on North Korea was made at the South Korea-U.S.-Japan summit held in Hamburg, Germany, in July 2017.

At that time, the three countries agreed to apply "maximum pressure" on North Korea to bring about the country's "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization."

Three-way cooperation between Korea, the United States and Japan has since stalled as the Moon administration pursued détent with North Korea and attempted to facilitate dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang, which resulted in summits in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019 between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but not the complete nuclear disarmament demanded by the United States.

The North has not responded to U.S. calls to return to dialogue since the collapse of the Hanoi summit without an agreement.

Wednesday's scheduled meeting between Yoon, Biden, and Kishida in Madrid comes as North Korea has ratcheted up tensions by conducting 18 missile tests since the beginning of this year.

U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials have also warned that the country has completed preparations to conduct the seventh nuclear test in its history.

Kim and high-ranking officials discussed changes to front-line military units during a key meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party, state media reported Thursday.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]