Yoon to attend NATO summit in Spain

Jun 27, 2022, 07:49 am

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President Yoon Suk-yeol delivers remarks at a luncheon with veterans of the 1950-Korean War at Hotel Shilla in Seoul on June 24, 2022./ Souce: Yonhap News

AsiaToday reporter Lee Wook-jae

President Yoon Suk-yeol will depart to Spain on Monday for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

This is the first time for a South Korean president to attend a NATO summit, and Yoon will hold a trilateral summit with the United States and Japan for the first time in four years.

Yoon did not have any official schedule Sunday as he prepared for his NATO summit, according to the presidential office.

Yoon plans to hold at least 14 meetings during his trip to Spain. He has confirmed to hold one summit with NATO allies, two summit meetings, nine bilateral talks, one multilateral meeting, and one business meeting. Additional meetings may be held depending on the situation.

He will arrive in Spain late on Monday before starting his official schedule on Tuesday. Starting with a summit with the President of Finland, he will meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and attend a gala dinner hosted by King Felipe VI of Spain.

“Since it is a meeting where all the leaders of NATO countries attend, Yoon will be able to meet the leaders of our allies naturally and build friendship,” a high-ranking official from the presidential office said. Initially, there was a possibility for Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to have talks in the form of a “pull-aside” on several issues on the sidelines of the NATO meeting. However, they eventually decided not hold no one-on-one Korea-Japan summit nor bilateral talks.

After a meeting with King Felipe VI on Wednesday, Yoon will hold bilateral talks with the heads of the Netherlands, Poland and Denmark successively, to talk about economic issues and future growth issues such as semiconductors, nuclear power and clean energy.

On the same day, Yoon is expected to give a three-minute-long speech during a joint session with NATO members and partner nations, evaluating the status of cooperation between South Korea and NATO, calling for the international community’s attention and support for the denuclearization of North Korea.

On the sidelines of the NATO gathering, Yoon will hold a trilateral summit with U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. This will be the first trilateral meeting in four years since the last summit, which was held in September 2017. However, the upcoming trilateral meeting will not long for more than 30 minutes due to other schedules.

On the last day of his trip, Yoon will hold bilateral talks with the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, to discuss various economic cooperation measures, including cooperation related to nuclear power exports and more.

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