The top military officials of South Korea and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization held phone talks Tuesday ahead of a major NATO meeting next week, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, amid joint efforts to deepen cooperation.

JCS Chairman Adm. Kim Myung-soo spoke by phone with Adm. Rob Bauer, chair of NATO's military committee, on the two-day NATO Military Chiefs of Defense meeting in Brussels starting next Wednesday to be attended by South Korean officials, according to the JCS.

South Korea is not a NATO member state but has been invited to the meeting set to discuss the alliance's key challenges along with other Asia Pacific partner nations -- Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

During the talks, the two sides noted the security of the Atlantic region is inseparable from that of the Indo-Pacific region, and reaffirmed their stance against "changes to the status quo by force," according to the JCS.

They also agreed on the need to expand cooperation to maintain a "rules-based international order," it said.

Meanwhile, Kim stressed that North Korea's nuclear and missile threats pose grave challenges to peace and security in the world beyond the Korean Peninsula, and expressed concerns over recently growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.

For next week's NATO meeting, South Korea will be represented by JCS Vice Chairman Lt. Gen. Hwang You-sung, according to the JCS.

Seoul has recently made efforts to strengthen ties with NATO, with President Yoon Suk Yeol pledging to increase military information sharing with NATO during a summit involving the alliance's member states and partner nations in Vilnius last year.