President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday held a series of bilateral talks with the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) member states in Lithuania on the sidelines of the alliance’s summit.

Yoon held back-to-back talks with leaders of Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, New Zealand, Hungary, Romania and Sweden.

In the meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Yoon expressed hope for increased cooperation in renewable energy and the arms industry among other fields, and underscored the need for a united response from the international community to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.

Støre said that Norway hopes for active cooperation in the areas of offshore wind power, hydrogen energy and carbon capture technology as well as the defense industry.

President Yoon then held talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte over lunch.

The two leaders assessed that since Prime Minister Rutte's official visit to South Korea in November last year, the two nations are seeing bilateral cooperation strengthening in the areas of defense, security, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and nuclear power plants. 

Yoon and Rutte agreed to further deepen and expand cooperation in the semiconductor industry to stabilize the global supply chain, with efforts at the governmental level to strengthen communication and support to that end.

Yoon then held an informal meeting with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonia Costa, who voiced hope for close cooperation with South Korean semiconductor companies to enable Portugal to join the value chain alliance of the global supply chain. In response, Yoon said that he will provide support for smooth cooperation between the two countries' businesses. 

In the meetings, President Yoon said that South Korea would join the international community's efforts to end the war in Ukraine and restore peace, while asking the leaders to support South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in Busan.