Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul will attend the NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting Allies-India-Pacific Partner Session held in Brussels, Belgium on the 3rd (local time). Korea has been invited to the NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting for four consecutive years.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 1st, this NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting will be attended by NATO allies as well as Indo-Pacific partner countries including Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, the European Union (EU), and Ukraine. Discussions are expected to cover defense industry cooperation and security linkage between Europe and the Indo-Pacific region.
The NATO Foreign Ministers' Meeting is held in April, two months ahead of the annual June summit, to finalize the agenda. This year's summit is scheduled for June in The Hague, Netherlands. Notably, the meeting is drawing attention as it takes place amid the Trump administration's comprehensive pressure on countries to increase defense spending since President Donald Trump's inauguration. In this context, the meeting is expected to focus intensively on discussions about raising NATO member countries' defense expenditure targets.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, "Minister Cho's attendance at this meeting will be an important opportunity to further strengthen the partnership with NATO, which shares core values in the current situation where security in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region is closely linked, and to concretize strategic cooperation with NATO in areas such as defense industry." It added, "Minister Cho plans to hold bilateral and multilateral meetings with the NATO Secretary General and key foreign ministers during the meeting to discuss practical cooperation measures."
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