Sánchez acknowledges from Seoul the concern about North Korea's nuclear program and ballistic tests

MADRID, 17 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has acknowledged the concern about the development of the nuclear program and the continued ballistic tests by North Korea, the last one this Thursday, from Seoul, where he is on an official visit.

"We are concerned about the development of North Korea's nuclear program and its worrying escalation of weapons", acknowledged Sánchez during the closing ceremony of the Spain-Korea Tribune in the South Korean capital organized by the Corea Foundation and Casa Asia.

"The unprecedented number of ballistic tests so far this year, in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions, warns of the validity of the North Korean threat," he added, hours after Pyongyang carried out a new launch of a ballistic missile into the Sea of ​​Japan, also known as the East Sea.

In this sense, the president wanted to make it clear to South Korea, one of the countries most threatened by North Korean activities, that the Spanish government is "very aware of this despite the pre-eminence that current news devotes to other theaters of conflict as is the case in Ukraine".

Sánchez stressed that in "times of extraordinary uncertainty like the ones we are currently experiencing", what is needed "are reliable partners, with whom we share values, to continue building and defending an international order based on rules" and multilateralism.

South Korea, the president has maintained, is one of these countries and therefore "one of our main allies in East Asia." In this sense, he has assured his desire that the Indo-Pacific region "consolidate as one of the regions of preferential action of Spain abroad due to its enormous economic dynamism, its capacity for innovation, its demographic weight and its growing political relevance.

Thus, he has defended that bilateral relations "are at their best moment", as evidenced by the succession of exchanges that have taken place in recent years, with the King's visit in 2019 on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of relations in 2020 and that of the then South Korean president, Moon Jae In, to Spain in 2021, the first outside his country after the pandemic and in which the relationship was raised to "strategic partners".

The current president, Yoon Sok Yeol, also made his first trip outside of South Korea to participate in the NATO summit in Madrid in June, recalled Sánchez, who has become the first president of the Government to travel to the Asian country. since relations were established.

"Let's hope it doesn't happen again and it doesn't take another 70 years and that these types of visits are more regular," he confided, stressing that "a clear recovery of trade flows in both countries" is being observed and that there is "a ample potential for growth" in both.