South Korea To Go Nuke Soon ?

 

 South Korea To Go Nuke Soon ?

South Korea faces growing calls to reconsider nuclearisation to counter North threat

Idea has been gaining traction in recent months given mounting aggression from Pyongyang.

South Korea is facing growing calls to acquire nuclear weapons to counter threats from the North, including tactical atomic bombs ready for use on the battlefield, analysts say.

The South’s nuclearisation would mean redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons to the country that were pulled out in the 1990s, or acquiring home-grown ones. However, the United States is unlikely to accept either option in the foreseeable future, according to analysts.

The idea of arming South Korea with nuclear weapons dates back to the first North Korean nuclear test in 2006. It was justified under the strategic doctrines of “mutual assured destruction” and “balance of terror” through nuclear weapons.

“The idea of South Korea’s nuclearisation has been gaining traction over the past months, especially among those advocating aggressive policies based on real politics, due to the mounting nuclear threats from the North,” said Park Won-gon, a political-science professor at Ewha University.

Due to Russia’s thinly-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine, decades of a taboo against hinting at the first use of nuclear weapons is being broken. “This is fuelling concerns among non-nuclear countries,” Park said.

Breaking days of a rare silence over its recent spate of missile launches, North Korean state media on Monday said the missile tests were intended to demonstrate its readiness to fire tactical nuclear warheads at potential targets in South Korea.

It has fired seven missiles in just over two weeks, including a nuclear-capable ballistic missile that flew over Japan and could reach the US Pacific territory of Guam and beyond.

The launches were conducted as a tit-for-tat against two sets of military drills – one between Washington and Seoul and the other involving Washington, Seoul and Tokyo – off the Korean peninsula’s east coast last week.

“By developing tactical nuclear warheads that could fit into various missiles, the North has drastically lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. This reality is sparking calls for the South to arm itself with nuclear weapons,” Park said.

Washington would stick to its vow to protect the South and other nuclear-free allies with its nuclear umbrella, but the US nuclear assets used for possible reprisals were too far away to be handy in the event of an attack on the South, he said.

“Some academicians believe the possibility of the South developing nuclear weapons and a consequent nuclear domino in the region would also add pressure on China to play a more active role in pushing the North to give up nuclear weapons,” he added.

The conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol on Saturday warned Pyongyang to expect a “resolute” and “overwhelming” response from Seoul and Washington if it attempted to use nuclear weapons.

But Yoon appeared to remain ambivalent on the issue of redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, saying he was now “listening carefully to various opinions in Seoul and Washington and contemplating them”.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, on Tuesday said Washington remained open to dialogue with Pyongyang without any preconditions for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, even after the North’s leader Kim Jong-un said his country felt no need for dialogue with the US or South Korea, according to the North’s state media on Monday.

But Kirby declined to comment when asked if the US might consider redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea when or if Pyongyang actually conducted its seventh nuclear test.

Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the option of South Korea acquiring indigenous nuclear weapons was unrealistic in light of potential damage to its alliance with the US.

Instead, the return of US tactical nuclear weapons would ensure “a stable South Korea-US alliance”, while strengthening their response to North Korea’s nuclear threats, he said, referring to the weapons pulled out from the South under the 1991 declaration on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula by the two Koreas.

“There has been a nuclear taboo – a normative inhibition against the first use of nuclear weapons – but Russia is about to break it in its war against Ukraine, thereby stoking concerns among countries (including South Korea) that do not have their own nuclear weapons,” Go told the Korea Times.

Cheong Seong-chang, of the think tank Sejong Institute, said there was no guarantee the US would hit the North with nuclear weapons in retaliation if the North attacked the South first and threatened to hit US targets if it intervened.

“Should the US hesitate to mount nuclear retaliatory attacks against the North for fear of a nuclear war with the North, the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons or sharing of them by the allies wouldn’t be of much use,” Cheong said on Monday.

A February 2022 poll commissioned by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 71 per cent of South Koreans were supportive of their country having nuclear weapons.

A similar survey in May 2022 by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies found 70 per cent supported indigenous nuclearisation, with 64 per cent in support even if that violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Daegu City Mayor Hong Joon-pyo of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) repeated his call for the South to acquire nuclear weapons of its own.

“It is time for the government to thoroughly review the nuclear strategy towards the North,” he wrote on Facebook on October 5, adding that national security should be achieved through a “military balance”.

Yoo Seong-min, another influential PPP politician, said South Korea should begin negotiations on sharing nuclear weapons or deploying tactical nuclear weapons with the Joe Biden administration.