The South Korean flag was raised for the first time at a Nato cyber defence centre in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, on Thursday, when Seoul became the first in Asia to join the group.
Nato’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence trains specialists from member states to work together to fend off cyberattacks and South Korea is the fifth non-Nato member to sign up for it.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said it had been trying to join the cyber defence centre since 2019 to learn more about threat response strategies and ways to protect key infrastructure, with the broad aim of having world-class abilities to respond to those dangers.
Although the centre is separate from the Nato command structure, Chinese military analysts said that the addition of its close neighbour and American ally to the group had Beijing worried, seeing it as expansion of the US-led defence alliance in northeast Asia that could threaten Chinese security interests in the region.
