President Lee Jae Myung returned to Seoul on Saturday after a five-day diplomatic tour that took him from a NATO summit in Turkey to a state visit to Mongolia, underscoring his effort to position South Korea as a more consequential player in both Euro-Atlantic security and the emerging geopolitics of Eurasia.
The journey also served as a bridge between Lee’s immediate foreign policy priorities and a broader strategic vision.
From NATO to Mongolia, the trip underscored his effort to deepen South Korea’s engagement with the 32-member trans-Atlantic alliance while expanding ties with countries across the northern reaches of Asia — a region his administration increasingly sees as important to economic security and supply chain resilience.
Lee’s trip began in Ankara, where he attended a NATO summit for the first time as president and sought to present South Korea as a long-term, trusted partner rather than merely a weapons supplier to the world’s largest defense market.
Speaking at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum on Tuesday, one of the summit’s flagship events, Lee proposed a “Korea-NATO Defense Industry Partnership 2.0,” calling for the relationship to move beyond arms purchases toward the joint development, production and operation of advanced weapons systems.
