NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has called on South Korea to provide more military support to Ukraine.

There is an urgent need for ammunition, Stoltenberg said during a visit to the South Korean capital of Seoul.

"If we believe in freedom, in democracy, if we don't want autocracy and tyranny to win, then they need guns," Stoltenberg said.

President Yoon Suk-yeol assured him that South Korea would continue to support Ukraine in cooperation with the international community.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan based in Tokyo.

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South Korea is providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine but has refused to supply arms.

South Korea has already supplied the USA with artillery ammunition for indirect support in the Ukraine war.

Last year, the country also signed two military agreements with Poland worth nearly $9 billion for the supply of hundreds of tanks, fighter jets and howitzers.

South Korea is thus stabilizing NATO's defenses on the eastern border against Russia.

One day in Seoul, Stoltenberg called on South Korea to reconsider its ban on arms exports to conflict zones.

He pointed out that several NATO countries, such as Germany and Norway, had changed their longstanding policy of not supplying arms to conflict zones after Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine.

In the North Korean state media, the NATO Secretary General's visit to South Korea and also to Japan was seen as an "incitement" to establish an Asian NATO.

Speaking for the state news agency KCNA, North Korean political scientist Kim Tong-myong wrote that the visit was the prelude to confrontation and war, and that it was bringing the dark clouds of a new cold war to the Asia-Pacific region.

allegations against North Korea

Stoltenberg said in Seoul that North Korea's support for Russia's war against Ukraine underscores the need for the rest of the world to stick together on security policy.

The American government accuses North Korea of ​​supporting Russia by supplying arms to the Wagner mercenaries.

North Korea's foreign ministry denies the allegation.

Stoltenberg kept a low profile on the hotly debated question in South Korea as to whether the American protecting power should first come to an agreement with South Korea about the possible use of nuclear weapons against North Korea.

He pointed out that according to the concept of extended deterrence, some NATO allies and partners such as South Korea do not have their own nuclear weapons, but are protected by the US nuclear shield.

This is important to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will be in Seoul with his South Korean counterpart to talk, among other things, about strengthening extended deterrence against North Korea.

In the evening Stoltenberg traveled on to Japan.

With his visits to South Korea and Japan, the Secretary-General emphasizes that in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine, close ties are developing between the Western defense alliance and its democratic partners in the Far East.

Last year, Yoon Suk-Yeol and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attended a NATO summit as guests for the first time.

Stoltenberg invited Yoon to do so again this year.