NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday urged South Korea to “step up” its military aid to Ukraine and suggested it reconsider its policy of not supplying arms to warring countries.
“If we believe in freedom, in democracy, if we don’t want autocracies and totalitarianism to prevail, then they need guns,” Stoltenberg said at the Chey Institute in Seoul on Monday, urging Seoul to do more for Kyiv.
He had met senior South Korean officials, including Secretary of State Park Jin, the day before as part of a trip to strengthen ties between NATO and its Asian allies.
South Korea is an increasingly important arms exporter on a global scale and recently signed deals to sell several hundred tanks to European countries, including Poland, a member of the Atlantic organization.
But its laws prevent it from selling them to nations at war, making it difficult to ship arms to Ukraine, to which Seoul has still provided non-lethal equipment and humanitarian aid.
Kyiv “urgently needs more ammunition,” Jens Stoltenberg said, noting that countries like Germany and Norway, which had arms export laws similar to South Korea’s, had revised their policies in support of Kyiv.
South Korea opened its first diplomatic mission to NATO last year.
China’s challenge
Mr Stoltenberg claimed it was “extremely important that President Putin does not win this war” because he believed it would make the world more dangerous.
In the event of a Russian victory, “the message to authoritarian leaders, including in this part of the world, will be in Beijing that using force is the way to get what you want,” he said.
He added that NATO does not see China as an “adversary” and believes in common engagement on issues ranging from arms control to climate change.
NATO allies continue to trade with China, but Europe’s energy vulnerabilities highlighted by the war proves one should not become “overly dependent on authoritarian powers,” he added.
The NATO Secretary General also warned that, according to the White House, the Russian army was preparing for a new war effort and was receiving weapons mainly from North Korea.
Pyongyang on Sunday denied it, warning that if the US continued to spread this “rumour, created from scratch,” it would expose itself to a “really undesirable outcome.”
The North Korean government has called the accusation a “stupid attempt to justify” the upcoming delivery of military vehicles to Ukraine by Washington, which last week promised to deliver 31 Abrams tanks to Kyiv.