U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly telephoned South Korean President Lee Myung-bak last week during negotiations in the U.S. on a pending bilateral free trade agreement (FTA).

During what Bloomberg reported was an hour-long phone call between Obama and Lee, the U.S. president emphasized the importance of the two nations’ strategic relationship and discussed the framework of the revised version of the free trade pact with Lee.

The report added that when talks were in a stalemate last Thursday morning, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Michael Froman took a walk with South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon and warned that South Korea could lose the opportunity to take the South Korea-U.S. alliance a step further if they failed to reach an agreement on the FTA.