In the coming week, the U.S., Japan, and Korea hold a Camp David summit.

Ecuador holds a snap election amid political violence, and South Africa hosts the Brick Summit.

It's August 17, 2023, in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon.

And I'm Carl Ann Robbins.

So Bob, tomorrow President Biden, South Korea's President

Yun and Japan's Prime Minister Kishita will meet at Camp David for their first

trilateral summit.

So we've talked before about the steps Seoul in Tokyo have taken to try to heal their historic wounds

and why the U.S. is so invested in that process. Are we expecting big deliverables from the summit?

I think in this case, the fact of the summit is the deliverable, Carla. And I think, as has been noted by in a few places, including our colleagues, Scott Snyder and Sheila Smith, the moment in time that they're seizing on is significant because they are trying to institutionalize cooperation.

Now, that's a wonky kind of a term, but in fact, is meaningful because in all three places, the political wins could change

the next couple of years in which there's, let's say, less gusto behind this, if not outright

opposition to, especially making Japan and South Korea sort of work closer together and put

behind them some really tough history.

So at the moment is seen as really propitious.

The issues, there's little disagreement on especially the North Korean threat. There's a great deal of concern about North

Korea as it ramps up overtly signaling its desire to expand its capabilities and ballistic

mistal testing. Everybody's waiting for another nuclear test or random nuclear test to happen as well.

And then the combination of the ability to weaponize nukes has huge amount of alarm resonating

not only in the region, but even in the U.S., where in North Korean missiles could potentially

reach. So that three sides are very much locked in on how to coordinate on tracking North

Korean activities, defending against them

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