President Yoon Suk Yeol will travel to Vilnius, Lithuania, on Monday to attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit to be held this week in the capital of the Baltic country. He will then end his European visit in Warsaw for a meeting with his Polish counterpart.
The NATO summit will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday and will bring together the leaders of the 31 member countries. South Korea was invited as a partner in the military alliance, along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Topics on the agenda will of course include the situation in Ukraine as well as negotiations on the accessions of Ukraine and Sweden, but also cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific region and new security threats.
Yoon will meet the organisation’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, but he will also have the opportunity to talk on the sidelines of the summit with more than a dozen leaders from countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Romania, Lithuania, Sweden, Slovakia, Estonia, Finland and Hungary.
South Korea and NATO will sign bilateral cooperation agreements in 11 areas, including non-proliferation, digital security and emerging technologies. “We will share the ways in which South Korea intends to contribute to peace in Ukraine […] and carry out our responsible global diplomacy in detail,” according to Deputy National Security Advisor Kim Tae-hyo. “It will be an opportunity for us to expand the horizon of our diplomacy with Europe through direct exchanges and with more leaders”.
A highly anticipated moment will be the meeting between Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Resistance in Korea against Japan’s plan to discharge contaminated water from the Fukushima power plant has intensified in recent days after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ruled it posed negligible risks. for health and the environment. The presidential office said Yoon would not raise the Fukushima issue on his own but would share Seoul’s official position if Kishida brings up the subject.
Yoon will then travel to Warsaw on Wednesday for a three-day official visit that will include a meeting with President Andrzej Duda. He will meet separately with the Prime Minister and the Speakers of the Lower and Upper Houses of Parliament and lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Discussions will focus on the development of ties, not only in trade and investment, but also in strategic sectors such as armaments, nuclear energy and infrastructure.
Yoon also plans to meet with representatives of South Korean companies operating in Poland, which seek to participate in reconstruction projects in post-war Ukraine, to discuss how the government can support them, according to Choi Sang-mok, economic affairs advisor to the presidential office.
A delegation of 89 businessmen will accompany Yoon on his trip, representing rechargeable battery, weapons and nuclear energy companies, as well as construction companies wishing to participate in reconstruction projects in Ukraine, Choi said. at the same press conference.
A presidential official told reporters that Yoon was not scheduled to visit Ukraine during his trip and meet President Volodymyr Zelensky.
This article is authored by Fabien Schneider.
