South Korean president visits UAE amid deepening ties

South Korean President Moon Jae-in's visit to the United Arab Emirates this week shows the Asian nation's deepening cooperation with the Gulf country, from buying its oil to building the Arabian Peninsula's first nuclear power plant and potentially backing it in war.

The defence pact Seoul reportedly struck with Abu Dhabi, decried as a secret deal by opponents in South Korea, further leverages a military arrangement that already has seen South Korean special forces help train the Emirati military.

A former South Korean defense minister has downplayed the chance of entering a conflict alongside the UAE as a "low risk."
"When we think about different kinds of shifting geopolitical games, it gets a little bit out of control," said June Park, a research fellow at the Northeast Asia Center at Seoul National University. "Even if this presidency is not the one that signed the military deal, I think it still says something."
Moon's meetings thus far have been held behind closed doors. Responding in writing to questions posed by the UAE's state-run WAM news agency, the South Korean leader said the visit would "boost friendship and cooperation between Korea and the UAE amidst volatile international situations."
"The Barakah nuclear power plant is not simply a mega construction project worth $18.6 billion," Moon wrote. "The fact that the UAE put confidence in Korea, which had no experience in constructing overseas nuclear power plants, and signed a contract with us to build one in Barakah was possible only because there was deep trust between our two countries."
"The UAE is a country in which a war had not taken place for a long time," he told the newspaper. "There was low risk. Even if a situation arose for deployment, we believed that our response could be flexible depending on the North Korea situation at the moment."
Since the report, activist groups have called on Moon's government to investigate the deal. South Korean special operations forces have been training Emirati forces since 2011 as part of a program called "Akh," the Arabic word for "brother."