Synopsis: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung will attend the NATO Summit in Türkiye before making a state visit to Mongolia, focusing on defence cooperation, supply chains, critical minerals, and regional diplomacy.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is set to do a five day diplomatic tour, in which he will show up at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Türkiye then continue on with a state visit to Mongolia. Overall this journey signals Seoul’s push to tighten defence teamwork, broaden its economic partnerships, and also extend its diplomatic footprint across Europe and Northeast Asia, a bit more actively than before.
President Lee is set to kick off his visit in Ankara, where he’ll attend the NATO Leaders’ Summit at the request of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. While South Korea isn’t, in the strict sense, a NATO member, the country has kept widening its collaboration with the alliance, kind of as a main pillar and as one of the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) partners alongside Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
One of the big aims of the NATO visit is to sort of beef up South Korea’s defence industry partnership with NATO member states. I mean the alliance, it’s more than half of worldwide defence spending, so there are quite a few chances for Korean defence manufacturers to broaden exports, and work together on advanced military tech. Also, President Lee is planned to speak at the NATO Defence Industry Forum, kind of to showcase South Korea’s defence making strengths, including artificial intelligence and those emerging military technologies that are coming up fast.
On the sidelines of the summit, Lee will take part in a meeting with NATO and the Indo-Pacific Four partners, to talk through regional security, defense cooperation, and the sort of shared geopolitical issues that keep resurfacing. South Korean officials have been emphasizing that what happens in Europe and what happens across the Indo-Pacific are getting more and more linked together, especially now with the evolving security environment.
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After the NATO Summit, President Lee is set to head over to Ulaanbaatar for a three day state visit to Mongolia; this is the first time a South Korean president has come in 15 years. While he is there, Lee will meet, face to face, with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh for high level summit talks, and after that both leaders are expected to put out a joint declaration, describing a fresh direction for bilateral ties and also signing a few memorandums of understanding.
Economic cooperation is going to be a central thing for the Mongolia visit, at least that’s how it looks. President Lee is scheduled to do a keynote speech at a Korea–Mongolia Business Forum, where government officials and business leaders will look into ways to push forward trade, investment, and industrial collaboration. Mongolia, with its plentiful reserves of critical minerals, is expected to become a pretty big part of the conversation about supply chain resilience and resource security. Overall, it’s not just about talking, but about practical partnership and long term stability, even if the details are still being worked out.
The visits will also, kind of touch on wider regional diplomacy. South Korea sees Mongolia as a strategic partner because of its location, between Northeast Asia and Eurasia and also because of its long running diplomatic links with North Korea. Officials say that tighter teamwork with Mongolia could help support conversations, regional steadiness, and peace efforts for the Korean Peninsula.
President Lee’s itinerary also has meetings with Mongolia’s prime minister, the parliamentary speaker and also a few members of the Korean community in Ulaanbaatar. On the last day of the visit, he will go to the opening ceremony of the Naadam Festival as guest of honour, and it will mark the first time a South Korean leader has taken part in Mongolia’s most important national celebration.
The diplomatic tour sort of follows President Lee’s recent participation in the G7 Summit, and it kind of underscores Seoul’s strategy of broadening its international partnerships, through economic diplomacy, defence cooperation, and supply chain collaboration. In other words it mixes engagement with NATO along with deeper ties with Mongolia, so South Korea is trying to build up its role as a key regional partner, while still pushing national interests in security, trade and critical mineral cooperation.