‘Asian version of NATO’: North Korea slams NATO chief’s trip to region

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ISTANBUL (AA) – North Korea on Monday blasted the NATO chief’s trip to South Korea and Japan as Jens Stoltenberg urged Seoul to “step up” military support for Ukraine.

“The high-ranking chief of the military organization which turned Ukraine into a theatre of proxy war is flying into the Asia-Pacific region of the eastern hemisphere across the sea and land, which is not even part of its operational sphere. This fact itself gives rise to concern,” wrote researcher Kim Tong Myong in state-run KCNA (Korean Central News Agency) on Monday.

The Pyongyang-based news agency identified Kim as a researcher at the Society for International Politics Study in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the official name of North Korea.

“Is the trip of the secretary general of NATO aimed to instigate the creation of the Asian version of NATO?" Kim asked.

Stoltenberg is on an official two-day trip to Seoul and will fly to Japan for official meetings. The two nations in the far east are close allies of the US in the region and attended the NATO summit in Spain last year.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is also expected to reach Seoul today.

While the NATO chief in Seoul lauded South Korea’s nonlethal aid to Ukraine, he urged it “to do more” on the lines of other nations which have “revised” their policies of not exporting weapons to countries engaged in conflict.

“There was an urgent need for ammunition,” Stoltenberg told a panel at Chey Institute for Advanced Studies in Seoul.

However, the Pyongyang researcher said it was “well known” that NATO has “long made persistent attempts to expand its sphere of influence limited to European defense to the Asia-Pacific region, which rose to be the strategic center of the world.”

“NATO has put unprecedented spurs to the strengthening of bilateral relations with South Korea and Japan in recent years, regarding them as a key link in realizing its ambition for hegemony,” Kim added.

Various bilateral and multilateral joint military exercises by NATO with the regional nations, the article claimed, are attempts through which NATO “introduced armed forces of its member states including aircraft carriers and fighters under the pretext of opposing the so-called change of status quo by force.”

According to Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency, Stoltenberg also supported “extended deterrence” extended to South Korea under which the nations like South Korea, which don’t have their own nuclear weapons, “are covered by the nuclear deterrence that the US provides. That is where to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

Kim, however, said the “huge sales contract” signed by South Korea for arms including heavy tanks, self-propelled guns, and fighters with NATO member state Poland, and Japan jointly developing next-generation fighters with the UK and Italy “clearly prove to what extent the NATO’s sinister intention to use South Korea and Japan for expanding its influence has reached.”

Kim called it a “general orientation sought by the US-led NATO to cook up Asian version of NATO serving the maintenance of its hegemonic position and order in collusion with its vassal forces.”

“It is quite natural that over the recent worrying moves of NATO, countries in the region have warned that NATO seeks to apply the method of collective confrontation in Asia-Pacific, which had already been used in Europe, and South Korea and Japan should not introduce NATO forces into the Asia-Pacific region,” he added.

“It is as clear as noonday that the secretary general of NATO flying to South Korea and Japan, at the time when the Ukrainian crisis has entered a new critical stage with the US and Western decision on supplying tanks, will shore up the ‘theory of threat from China’ to emphasize again the need to build Asian version of NATO and put pressure on them for their passive military support to Ukraine,” he said.