Cho Tae-yeol to Attend NATO Meeting Next Week... Discussing 'Europe and Indo-Pacific Security'

Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul will attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Foreign Ministers' Meeting held next week in Brussels, Belgium.

According to government sources on the 29th, Minister Cho is scheduled to attend the NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting held on the 3rd and 4th of next month (local time) as a member of NATO's four Asia-Pacific partner countries (AP4: Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). NATO announced on its website that during this Foreign Ministers' Meeting, there will be a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC), NATO's highest decision-making body, along with representatives from Korea, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Minister Cho is expected to use this meeting as an opportunity to solidify the existing cooperation framework between Korea and NATO and to discuss exploring new areas of cooperation. Korea and NATO signed the "Individualized Tailored Partnership Program" (ITPP), a document defining the framework for cooperation between the two sides, following President Yoon Suk-yeol's attendance at the NATO Summit last year.

There is also interest in whether discussions will take place regarding the increased security connectivity between Europe and the Indo-Pacific region amid changing international circumstances such as the Ukraine war and military cooperation between North Korea and Russia. NATO adopted the "2022 Strategic Concept" at the Madrid Summit in 2022, which explicitly identified China as a "challenge," and since then, it has consistently invited AP4 countries, including Korea, to meetings, thereby expanding its engagement with the Indo-Pacific region.

Korea has also attended the NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting consecutively in recent years. In April last year, then Vice Foreign Minister Lee Do-hoon attended the meeting on behalf of Minister Park Jin. Minister Cho is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with foreign ministers from other countries attending this meeting.

It is noteworthy whether foreign ministers from AP4 countries such as Japan and Australia will attend. If Japanese Foreign Minister Kamikawa Yoko attends, it will mark a meeting between Korean and Japanese foreign ministers again about a month after the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting held in late February in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also announced that he will attend this NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting, according to the U.S. Department of State.