U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with leaders of South Korea and Japan Friday to come up with a "coordinated" response to the deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to help Moscow’s war against Ukraine and on Pyongyang’s nuclear threat more broadly, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Lima, Peru.
Pyongyang’s troop deployment is a "significant development," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Lima, Wednesday.
"We are going to treat it with the seriousness with which it deserves to be treated," he said.
Sullivan said the trilateral summit will allow leaders to prepare for any potential "provocative" move from Pyongyang, including nuclear testing and ballistic missile launches, as the U.S. prepares for a change of administration when Donald Trump takes office in January.
"Transitions have historically been time periods when the DPRK has taken provocative actions," Sullivan said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The United States has an "extended deterrence" policy that aims to prevent adversaries from attacking allies, including South Korea and Japan. The policy states Washington will come to their aid if they are attacked, potentially including use of American nuclear capabilities.
No specific announcement on extended deterrence will be announced at a trilateral level in Lima, Sullivan said. However, the trilateral meeting will be an opportunity to "ensure that each of these two bilateral dialogues are working to reinforce one another, and that there aren't gaps and seams between them."
The leaders are set to announce establishment of a trilateral secretariat as part of their efforts to "institutionalize" three-way cooperation that began as a series of leaders’ dialogues on economic security, intelligence sharing, and defense policy coordination. The trilateral leaders’ dialogues began in May 2023 on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, and then at Camp David in August that year.
The trilateral effort is one of Biden’s signature regional security initiatives to push Seoul and Tokyo to overcome years of animosity and work together to deter common adversaries, North Korea and China.
The leaders are also set to bolster trilateral exercises, Sullivan said.
"We've made progress on technology protection, on supply chain diversification, on missile warning and the sharing of data with respect to miswarning in all of those areas," he said. "We expect to take further steps tomorrow."
U.S., Japanese and South Korean militaries Thursday launched joint exercises in waters south of the Korean peninsula and west of Japan, the final drills under the Biden administration.
During his first term Trump advocated for friendlier ties with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and pressured Tokyo and Seoul to take on a larger share of U.S. defense burden-sharing.
A day before Trump’s reelection, the U.S. and South Korea a finalized a new agreement for Seoul to pay $1.19 billion in 2026 to support U.S. troops, an 8.3% increase from the previous year.
