NATO chief encourages Korea to ‘step-up’ support for Ukraine

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has invited President Yoon Suk Yeol to the alliance’s summit in Lithuania in July during his visit to South Korea as North Korea’s state media blasted his trip as auguring a “new Cold War” in the Asia-Pacific region.

The NATO chief extended the invitation to President Yoon during their meeting at the presidential office on Monday afternoon. The president said he would review the invitation — his second since becoming president in May last year — and deliver his response in due time.

In a press release, South Korean presidential spokesperson Kim Eun-hye said that President Yoon asked the NATO chief to play an “active role” in discouraging North Korea from carrying out armed provocations and trying to heighten military tensions, citing a common commitment to human rights, freedom, rule of law and the international rules-based order.

Speaking at an event in Seoul hosted by the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies before talks with Yoon and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup, Stoltenberg also urged South Korea to increase military support to Ukraine, including deliveries of lethal weapons.

“I urge the Republic of Korea to continue and to step up on the specific issue of military support,” he said, referring to South Korea by its official name.

“At the end of the day, it’s a decision for you to make, but I’ll say that several NATO allies who have had as a policy to never export weapons to countries in a conflict have changed that policy now.”

While South Korea has provided artillery ammunition to the United States and signed major deals with Poland providing hundreds of tanks, aircraft and howitzers since Russia invaded Ukraine, it has declined to send weapons directly to the latter despite a direct appeal from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the National Assembly in April last year.

Stoltenberg did not directly respond to a question about whether South Korea needs a nuclear weapons information-sharing body with the United States akin to NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, but he said that Washington’s continued extended deterrence commitment to Seoul was necessary to maintain the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.

“I think it’s important to understand that what we call extended deterrence, meaning that NATO allies and also some NATO partners, like South Korea, they don’t have their own nuclear weapons but are covered by the nuclear deterrence that the United States provides. That is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he said.

In their meeting at the Defense Ministry, Lee and Stoltenberg discussed the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and Europe and explored avenues to deepen defense cooperation between South Korea and NATO, according to a Defense Ministry press release.

The ministry said Lee thanked 11 of NATO’s 30 member countries for their contributions to the defense of South Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War and expressed hopes for stronger future cooperation.

The defense minister also thanked NATO for its support for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and its condemnations of Pyongyang’s missile tests.

Stoltenberg in turn pledged NATO’s continued support for Seoul’s pursuit of peace on the Korean Peninsula and characterized North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles as a grave threat to international stability.

Meanwhile, in an article carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Tong-myong, a researcher of the North’s organization on international political studies, said Stoltenberg’s current trip to Northeast Asia appears to be aimed at “instigating” the creation of the Asian version of NATO.

“The trip of the NATO secretary general to South Korea and Japan is a prelude to confrontation and war as it brings the dark clouds of a ‘new Cold War’ to the Asia-Pacific region,” Kim said.

Stoltenberg arrived in Seoul on Sunday for a two-day stay before traveling to Japan later on Monday.

In a meeting with Foreign Minister Park Jin on Sunday, he said North Korea’s support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforces the need for the rest of the world to stay “interconnected” in their security efforts.

In a statement carried by the KCNA on Sunday, North Korea’s foreign ministry denied the regime was arming the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization that has recruited heavily from Russian prisons to build a 50,000-strong force in Ukraine, after the White House accused Pyongyang of shipping weapons into Russia to support the group.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]