Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul (left) and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meet on the margins of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 14, Thursday, in this photo provided by Cho's office. (Yonhap)
Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken have discussed bilateral ties and concerns about North Korea's troop dispatch to Russia, vowing close coordination against Pyongyang and Moscow's growing alignment, Cho's office said Friday.
Cho and Blinken held talks on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Peru on Thursday, where the top diplomats accompanied their leaders on the APEC summit.
In the meeting, both sides expressed concerns over North Korea and Russia's deepening military cooperation as an illicit one that gravely threatens the security of both the Indo-Pacific and Europe, according to Seoul's foreign ministry.
"In particular, they agreed to closely cooperate on the issue while monitoring the possibility of Russia providing military assistance to the North in return for the deployment," the ministry said in a release.
"They discussed strong concerns over deepening ties between the DPRK and Russia, particularly the deployment of DPRK troops to support Russia's war against Ukraine," the U.S. State Department said in a separate statement, referring to the North by its official name.
On Wednesday, South Korea's spy agency confirmed North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat operations against the Ukrainian forces in Russia's western Kursk border region.
The confirmation echoes an earlier announcement by the U.S. that most of the 10,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to the Kursk area have begun engaging in combat.
Blinken stressed that bipartisan support for the South Korea-U.S. alliance remains strong and said major accomplishments of the alliance will likely be smoothly handed over to the new administration, according to Seoul's foreign ministry.
Cho introduced Seoul's efforts for the successful organization of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution, set to be held in the southeastern port city of Busan, and called for continued efforts by the allies to jointly address global issues, to which Blinken concurred, it added.
The latest meeting came two weeks after Cho and Blinken met in Washington, D.C., late last month for the "two plus two" meeting that was joined by the defense chiefs of the two nations.
In a ministerial meeting of APEC member states in Lima, Cho reiterated his call for a halt in North Korea and Russia's military cooperation, saying such alignment damages not only the prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region but peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and around the globe.
As the host nation of APEC next year, Cho said South Korea will handle digital innovation as a key agenda item and hold what would be APEC's first digital ministerial meeting, according to the ministry. (Yonhap)
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