South Korea, NATO hold first military staff talks in Seoul

Seoul, Feb 14 (EFE).- South Korea and NATO held their first military staff talks in Seoul, the South Korean military said Tuesday, in a sign of deepening security ties between the two sides.

The two-day meeting between the representatives of the South Korean military and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began on Monday.

Maj. Gen. Kim Su-Kwang, from the strategic planning directorate at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Lt. Gen. Francesco Diella, director of NATO’s cooperative security division, co-chaired the two-day session, the South Korean military said.

The two sides held the defense talks after they agreed on the need to hold such regular meetings during their high-level talks in 2021 and last year.

These meetings were agreed upon after the high-level talks held in 2021 and during the NATO summit held last year in Madrid, which South Korea attended as a guest country.

South Korea’s growing rapprochement with the military bloc was also evident with the opening of a diplomatic mission to NATO in Brussels in November last year.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg visited Seoul at the end of last month.

The South Korean military said it was a regular meeting at the level of directors-general to improve understanding of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula and strengthen mutual exchanges and cooperation.

Asked at a press conference about the possibility that Seoul sending weapons to Ukraine, the military spokesperson Lee Sung-jun said they did not touch upon the issue in the meetings in Seoul.

The two sides will hold a similar meeting next year in Brussels. EFE

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