Biden brings South Korean and Japanese leaders to Camp David for his first summit at the wooded presidential retreat as they face threats from North Korea and China

President Joe Biden continues his charm offensive with the leaders of Japan and South Korea by hosting them Friday for a summit at Camp David — the first time he has hosted leaders at the wooded presidential retreat.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol will spend the day with Biden — before he leaves the East Coast for a vacation at Lake Tahoe.

The leaders will sign a new security pledge, agreeing to consult with each other should a crisis arise in the Pacific, a plan that is already agitating the Chinese and comes as North Korea is expected to test a new range of missiles.

“It is emphatically not NATO for the Pacific,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday morning, addressing Chinese criticism. “We said that, we will continue to emphasize that, just like Japan and Korea.”

Sullivan noted that the summit – and the agreements that flow from it – are a natural continuation of what Biden started right after being sworn in, as he has made gestures to emphasize the importance of the US’s relationship with the two Asian powers.

“In many ways, the summit has been in the making since the day President Biden took office,” Sullivan said Friday morning, ahead of the trip from Camp David.

“He’s really focused on each of these relationships, each of these alliances, the bilateral relationship that we have with Japan and Korea and then of course the trilateral collaboration between the three of us,” Sullivan said.

As COVID got better, Biden’s April 2021 meeting with then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was his first face-to-face bilateral meeting at the White House.

His second was a month later with then-Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Last May, Biden’s first trip to Asia as president began with a stopover in South Korea to meet with newly elected Yoon.

He then headed to Tokyo for facetime with Kishida, who took office in October 2021.

Biden then had Yoon at the White House for his second state dinner as president in April.

That night featured Yoon showing off his singing skills, singing the lyrics to American Pie, while guests including actress Angelina Jolie, her son Maddox, and hopeful powerhouses Chip and Joanna Gaines looked on.

Biden returned to Japan in May as Hiroshima — and all its nuclear history — became the venue for the annual G7 meeting, where a surprise visit from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made the Russian invasion the main topic, on all Indo-Pacific concerns .

“We’ve had 150 years of alliance cooperation between us,” Sullivan said Friday, ignoring the fact that the U.S. and Japan faced off against each other during World War II, and Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula in the early 20th century .

“So this – in that sense, the work we’re doing with these two countries – is not new. What’s new is that we’re now merging all that work to try and improve regional stability and security,” Sullivan said.

Ahead of the meeting, Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters on Friday that “the international community has its own judgment on who is creating contradictions and rising tensions.”

“Attempts to form various exclusive groups and cliques and bring bloc confrontations in the Asia-Pacific region are unpopular and are sure to arouse vigilance and opposition in the countries of the region,” Wang said.

Sullivan insisted that the Camp David summit is “not against anyone, but for something.”

“It’s a vision of the Indo-Pacific that is free, open, safe and prosperous,” he said.

“If you look at the deliverables, if you look at the Joint Declaration, if you look at the principles emerging today, they focus not on a country, but on an affirmative vision of how we can to perform. results for the peoples of our countries, but also for people in the Pacific,” Sullivan added.

The summit marks the first time Camp David has been used for a visit by a foreign leader since 2015, after former President Donald Trump’s plans to hold a 2020 G7 summit at the Maryland mountain cabin were scrapped by the coronavirus pandemic. coronavirus.

Trump had also used Camp David to meet with Taliban leaders while trying to pull the US out of the conflict in Afghanistan.

Prior to Trump, President Barack Obama had used Camp David in May 2015 to host the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states during nuclear talks with Iran.

It was first used to host foreign leaders during World War II, when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt devised a strategy in the hideout, then known as ‘Shangri-La’.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to the wooded hills of Maryland in hopes of brokering a peace deal.

That attempt failed.

President George W. Bush received Russian President Vladimir Putin at Camp David, with Putin later famously showing the US President that he had a larger dog than Bush, after meeting the Scottish terrier Barney during the trip.

The name Camp David came from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, named after his father and grandson.