Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday met his South Korean counterpart Suh Wook and “explored new domains of bilateral defence cooperation and avenues to strengthen the long-standing bilateral defence partnership”, a statement by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
Suh arrived in India on Thursday for a three-day visit with a focus on boosting bilateral defence and military cooperation.
According to the MoD statement, Singh and Suh “successfully concluded their bilateral talks on defence cooperation” and acknowledged that the bilateral defence cooperation between the two sides has “broadened significantly in scale and scope across tri-service as well as agencies dealing with defence technology and industry”.
Noting that defence and security engagements have “grown exponentially” between India and South Korea over the past few years, the statement said that the countries have “also found common ground on several multilateral fora and engagements”.
During their talks, the MoD statement said, the two ministers “reaffirmed their support to multilateral initiatives to promote lasting peace and stability in the region and beyond”. Singh stated that the bilateral relations between both the countries “are set to grow further and the meeting between them will give it the necessary impetus to take it to the next level”.
Both ministers expressed satisfaction “over the commitment exhibited by diverse agencies of both countries to sustain structured annual dialogues at various levels of leadership through virtual means when travel and physical engagements became increasingly challenging during the ongoing pandemic” which has “kept up the momentum of bilateral defence engagements”.
Singh and Suh also discussed the impact of the pandemic on defence and security engagements, along with the best practices followed by the armed forces of the two nations.
The MoD statement added that Singh “lauded the stellar contribution” of South Korea in pandemic mitigation efforts.
Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, the chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force were also part of the Indian delegation, along with senior bureaucrats of the ministry.
Earlier in the day, Singh and Suh inaugurated the India-Korea Friendship Park in a ceremony at the Delhi Cantonment, which, the statement said, “is a symbol of close relations between both the countries and acknowledges the contribution of the Indian Army’s Medical Mission during the Korean War”.
