Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul has met with his counterparts of Belgium and the European Union in Brussels to discuss bilateral cooperation on the sidelines of a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) foreign ministers, his office said Friday. Cho held talks with Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib on Thursday (local time) and discussed ways to boost bilateral ties in education, semiconductors and other high-tech industries, according to the ministry. During their talks, Lahbib also stressed that "stability and prosperity in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region are linked together." Separately, Cho met with EU High Representative Josep Borrell on Thursday and discussed ways to step up cooperation in a wide range of areas, including security and defense. The two sides agreed to work closely together to sign a security partnership and hold the first strategic dialogue between their foreign ministers as agreed at the bilateral summit last year. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Borrell wrote th at he discussed with Cho the burgeoning military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, saying the two sides are "concerned by the DPRK-Russia military cooperation and Russia's use of DPRK ballistic missiles against Ukraine." DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Cho departed for Belgium late Tuesday for a three-day trip to attend the NATO meeting. South Korea was invited to the ministerial meeting for the third year as one of the non-NATO partners in the Indo-Pacific region. Source: Yonhap News Agency