Short remarks

President Yoon,

Welcome to the NATO Summit, it’s great to see you again.

A great honour to have you here, the third time the Republic of Korea is present at the NATO Summit. And this demonstrates how highly valued partner you are for our Alliance.

We appreciate the close partnership with your country, not least because our security is not regional, it is global.

And this is clearly illustrated by the war in Ukraine, Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.

North Korea is delivering significant amount of ammunition and military support to enable Russia to conduct its war of aggression against Ukraine.

And we are deeply concerned about the possibility of Russia, in return, delivering support to North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.

The missile and nuclear programmes of North Korea are a threat to the region and also to global security.

So this demonstrates how security in the Indo-Pacific is closely intertwined with security in Europe.

And therefore, I appreciate our partnership. I very much appreciate the possibility I had to visit you in Seoul not such a long time ago, and I hope that in the future we can further expand the partnership between the Republic of Korea and NATO.

At this Summit, we will agree flagship projects for deepened and more practical cooperation.

I also very much welcome that today, we will agree airworthiness recognition certificates to enable us to deepen our cooperation and interoperability between NATO and the Republic of Korea.

So once again Mr. President, warm welcome. It’s good to have you here.