President Yoon Suk-yeol meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
President Yoon Suk-yeol and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg have agreed to upgrade the partnership and bolster security cooperation between South Korea and the Atlantic alliance.
The agreement was signed at a meeting between the two leaders in Vilnius, Lithuania, Tuesday (local time). Yoon is currently visiting the Baltic country to attend the 2023 NATO summit.
Both sides signed a new partnership agreement composed of 11 documents, called Individually Tailored Partnership Programs (ITPPs), which will cover bilateral cooperation in new sectors such as cybersecurity, new technologies, climate change and the defense industry.
"This year's participation in the NATO summit is aimed at institutionalizing the framework of cooperation between South Korea and NATO through ITPPs and discuss cooperation in military intelligence and cybersecurity," Yoon said during the meeting.
"As Secretary-General Stoltenberg said, the security of the Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific are inseparable, and under these circumstances, close cooperation between NATO and Indo-Pacific countries, including South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, is becoming more important than ever."
The 11 areas include counterterrorism cooperation, arms reduction and non-proliferation, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, science and technology and cooperation for interoperability.
Meanwhile, Stoltenberg told Yoon on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius, "Korea is a very highly valued partner of NATO. We value the partnership with you because security is not regional, security is global. What happens in the Indo-Pacific matters for Europe and what happens in Europe matters for the Indo-Pacific."