South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol adopted a new partnership with NATO on Tuesday to establish cooperation in eleven areas related to national security, including cyber defense and emerging technologies. Given that Korea’s increasing cooperation with NATO seems aimed at countering China and Russia, critics say that Yoon is aiding NATO with its plans to expand into Asia.

Experts said that more cooperation with NATO will not have many practical advantages for Korea.

“Korea is dancing to the tune of NATO as it seeks to expand into Asia through such projects as setting up a liaison office in Japan,” Kim Dong-yup, a professor with the University of North Korean Studies, told the Hankyoreh on Tuesday. “Unlike a military alliance with the US and Japan, there are no meaningful security benefits to be gained from cooperation with NATO. If anything, it’s troublesome because it means joining the front against China and Russia.”

“NATO has been stepping up its efforts to counter China and Russia since last year, and South Korea seeks to follow suit under the name of ‘values diplomacy.’ Since the Yoon administration has placed importance on forging military ties with countries with which it shares values, it seems to be stressing cooperation with NATO as well,” said Kim Joon-hyung, a professor at Handong Global University.

On Tuesday morning, the first day of the NATO summit, Yoon met with six US senators from the Senate NATO Observer Group at a hotel in downtown Vilnius. “The evolution of the ROK-US alliance into a ‘global comprehensive strategic alliance’ shows that the alliance is moving onto a larger stage,” Yoon said during the meeting.

Yoon then discussed options for security and supply chain cooperation in separate bilateral meetings with the heads of countries including Norway, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Kim Young-ho is a hard-liner on North Korea who has argued for the overthrow of the Kim Jong-un regime and has stressed that South Korea should arm itself with its own nuclear weapons

Critics point out that his appointment dulls the value and meaning of the unification ministry, which should carry out unification policies aimed at North Korea.

On a YouTube video posted on Feb. 20 this year, he contended that US tactical nuclear weapons should be redeployed to the Korean Peninsula, arguing that “the time has come for the US to actively consider redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea and for South Korea to strongly make such demands to the US.”

Kim Young-ho’s claim that the road to unification should be opened by “overthrowing the Kim Jong-un regime” due to the fact that relations between the two Koreas are “hostile” can be summed up as a position advocating for coercive unification through absorption. This runs counter to the Yoon administration’s official stance against pursuing unification through absorption.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies, commented that Thursday’s personnel appointments “signal the launch of a ‘ministry of confrontation’ or a ‘ministry of North Korean absorption’ that aims to unify [Korea] through absorption via antagonism and confrontation rather than a unification ministry seeking peaceful unification through dialogue and cooperation.”

The atmosphere within the ministry as it welcomes outside figures for its two chief positions is uneasy. One official told Yonhap News that “it seems like the unification ministry is being demanded to completely change its organizational identity, such as what it does, its approach, and the mindset of its members.”