US-Japan-S Korea summit a coup for Biden but will détente last?
The United States and China have achieved what many deemed impossible - a historic meeting between US President Joe Biden, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea's President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Mr Biden hosted the first stand-alone meeting among the three countries at the Camp David presidential retreat in the US on Friday. It's a diplomatic - but still tenuous - coup for the American leader.
South Korea and Japan are neighbours and old US allies, but they have never been friends.
Now, however, an increasingly assertive China has renewed US interest in East Asia. And it has brought together two countries who for decades have struggled to overcome deep historical grievances.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Biden praised the "political courage" of the South Korean and Japanese leaders.
"Our countries are stronger, and the world will be safer, as we stand together. I know that's a belief that we all three share," he said, while Mr Yoon said it was a "historic day".
In a joint statement, they said they opposed China's "dangerous and aggressive behaviour" in maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas.
They also agreed to hold regular joint exercises, consult each other during crises, share real-time data on North Korea and hold summits every year.
"I find the meeting at Camp David mind-blowing," Dennis Wilder wrote on X, formerly Twitter. A professor at Georgetown University, he managed the Japan and South Korea relationship under former President George W Bush.
At that time, they could "barely get South Korean and Japanese leaders to meet with us in the same room," he said.
In recent months, Mr Kishida and Mr Yoon have taken tentative steps to resolve their hostilities, and strengthen ties with Washington. This once-inconceivable alliance is driven by shared concerns - the biggest of which is China.
The meeting at Camp David - also the first time foreign leaders have visited the presidential retreat since 2015 - is an attempt to "signify and to demonstrate how seriously" Mr Biden takes the relationship between Japan and South Korea, according to a White House spokesman.
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