SEOUL -- Norway's top diplomat has called for building a "close" security partnership with South Korea, citing "worrying trends" between North Korea and Russia in the wake of the North's dispatch of troops to support Moscow's war against Kyiv.
In an interview with Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide made the call during his visit to South Korea, which marked the first in 32 years by a Norwegian foreign minister.
"South Korea neighbors North Korea, and we are bordering on Russia," he said. "They are connected through the Ukraine war, so our security and your security are deeply intertwined.
"We want to ... continue to develop this close partnership with South Korea both on the trade front but also on security."
North Korea has sent thousands of troops and weapons in support of Russia's war against Ukraine, drawing condemnation from South Korea and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Norway is a founding member of.
Eide pointed to security risks stemming from cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, such as new knowledge and technology that Russia is expected to give to North Korea.
"North Korean soldiers will come back with a real war fighting experience," he said. "These are worrying trends."
"On our side, this means that the Russian side is strengthened at a time we would rather like to see Russia weaken, so here we are very connected."
Amid deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, South Korea has recently developed closer ties with NATO as an Indo-Pacific partner.
Eide welcomed Seoul's partnership with NATO, saying it would be "logical that friends speak to each other" and share intelligence, experiences, knowledge, technology and interoperability.
"South Korea decides for itself what it wants to do with its security, but we welcome the close partnership that we have in the NATO context," he said. "It's very important in armed forces that we follow the same standards."
He still underlined the voluntary nature of South Korea's partnership, saying its participation is not a membership in the western military alliance.
"The degree of involvement is not something we decide for you, it's a completely voluntary arrangement."
Eide, who visited the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom on Tuesday, also drew parallels between the Korean Peninsula and ongoing efforts to end the war in Ukraine, suggesting a demilitarized zone between Kyiv and Moscow could be considered.
"What is being discussed right now these very days about Ukraine is whether there will be a DMZ," he said. "Having a certain separation, a demilitarized zone and somebody from the outside watching whether this is being respected ... these are parallels."
The two Koreas are separated by the DMZ -- a legacy of the armistice of the 1950-53 Korean War, which technically has not ended as a peace treaty was never signed.
"The other parallel is that let's try in the case of Ukraine to also move quickly to a peace agreement, not only cessation of hostilities."
He also highlighted the importance of the U.S.-led U.N. Command (UNC), which enforces the Korean War armistice and oversees activities within the DMZ.
"It is really the multilateral underpinning of the security guarantee to South Korea, which is good for all of us because that provides clarity and reduces the temptation to try to test the border," he said.
Norway is a member of the UNC, which consists of countries that supported South Korea under the U.N. flag during the three-year conflict. Norway contributed to the U.N. effort by dispatching some 620 medical personnel during the war.
Meanwhile, Eide voiced hope for bilateral cooperation to expand into new areas beyond existing ties in defense and maritime areas. Oslo has developed close defense ties with Seoul, highlighted by its repeated purchases of South Korea's K9 self-propelled howitzers.
"We are expanding cooperation in defense materiel but also in other aspects where we are both innovating, like artificial intelligence," he said.
During his talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun earlier Wednesday, Eide voiced hopes for cooperation to expand into advanced technologies and critical minerals, according to Seoul's foreign ministry.
