BOGOTA (Yonhap News) ― South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had an emotion-filled meeting with Colombian veterans of the Korean War on Saturday, saluting their life-risking sacrifice to defend the then little-known, faraway nation across the Pacific.

A wave of emotion swept through a Bogota hotel ballroom as tearful veterans spoke of their wartime experiences and how proud they felt to see the war-ravaged nation they shed blood for miraculously rising as one of the world’s largest economies.

“The Republic of Korea of today exists because you fought for and staked your lives to defend the far-flung nation in the East that you didn’t even know its name well,” Lee said during the meeting with surviving veterans and family members of the war dead, referring to South Korea’s official name.

“Had it not been for your help, the Republic of Korea could not be defended,” he said.

Colombia was the only nation from Central and South America to fight alongside South Korea against Chinese-backed North Korean forces. About 5,300 troops were dispatched halfway around the world to help fight the North’s invasion, of which 213 were killed and 567 wounded.

A total of 730 veterans are believed to still be alive.

Lee arrived in Bogota earlier Saturday, becoming the first South Korean president ever to visit the wartime ally. Of the 16 nations that sent combat troops to help defend South Korea, Colombia was the only one that had not been visited by a South Korean president.

“In the name of the people of the Republic of Korea, I want to tell you that we are very grateful and thankful,” Lee said.

Earlier in the day, Lee visited a Korean War memorial and paid tribute.

Flanked by Colombia’s defense minister, the solemn-faced Lee marked a moment of silence then offered a wreath at a Korean War memorial in Bogota as a military brass band played somber music. As the national anthems of the two countries were played, Lee stared at the bronze plate where the names of the war dead are inscribed.

Lee then shook hands with each of the bereaved family members and surviving veterans who attended the ceremony and accepted their requests to have pictures taken with him. Lee wrote a message in the guest book that read, “We will remember you forever and will never forget you. All of us are grateful.”

Another focus of Lee’s three-day trip to Colombia is a free trade agreement.

South Korea and Colombia are in the final stages of free trade talks and Lee’s trip is expected to provide the negotiations with important momentum, officials have said. That raised speculation the trade talks could be concluded during Lee’s trip.

The trade talks are expected to be a key topic for Lee’s summit talks Monday with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, along with deepening all-round cooperation, especially in areas such as trade and investment, infrastructure construction and resources development, science and technology.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Lee flew to Colombia after wrapping up a three-day visit to Chile that centered on further boosting the rapidly expanding relations between the two countries under a free trade pact.

Chile is the first country to sign a free trade agreement with South Korea. Since the pact went into effect in 2004, trade volume between the two countries has increased 4.6-fold, to $7.24 billion last year. South Korea’s market share in Chile has also doubled to 6.4 percent.

The trade pact was a key topic for Lee’s summit talks with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on Friday, with both leaders pledging to enter into “a second stage” of the agreement to expand bilateral cooperation to various areas, such as renewable energy, education and culture.

After the summit, the two sides signed three cooperation agreements, one on offshore energy generation, such as tidal power plants, another on joint research and development into renewable energy and other green energy technologies, and the third on preventing mine-related pollution.

Pinera has expressed strong interest in renewable energy cooperation with South Korea, especially since he visited the world’s largest tidal power plant on South Korea’s west coast in March. He was in Seoul to attend an anti-nuclear-terrorism summit.

Chile was the third leg of Lee’s four-nation trip to Latin America that already took the South Korean president to Mexico for a summit of the Group of 20 major economies and Brazil for a U.N. sustainable development summit.

In historical terms, Chile in 1949 became the first country in Latin America to recognize South Korea as a sovereign state. South Korea’s government was founded in 1948 after the Korean Peninsula was liberated from Japan’s colonial rule in 1945 and then divided between the North and South.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Chile, forged in 1962, and Lee was the first South Korean president to visit Chile in eight years, since the late Roh Moo-hyun in 2004.