Republic of Korea

Abstract

Under what conditions would the democracies in Northeast Asia seek to join the nuclear weapons club? Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are threshold nuclear powers by virtue of their robust civilian nuclear-energy programmes. All three once pursued nuclear weapons and all face nuclear-armed adversaries. Fitzpatrick's latest book analyses these past nuclear pursuits and current proliferation drivers. It considers how long it would take each to build a nuclear weapon if such a fateful decision were made but does not predict such a scenario. Unlike when each previously went down a nuclear path, democracy and a free press now prevail as barriers to building bombs in the basement. Reliance on US defence commitments is a better security alternative – as long as such guarantees remain credible. But extended deterrence is not a barrier to proliferation of sensitive nuclear technologies. Nuclear hedging by its Northeast Asian partners will challenge Washington's nuclear diplomacy.

Notes

1 Jiyoon Kim, ‘The Fallout: South Korean Public Opinion Following North Korea's Third Nuclear Test’, Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 24 February 2013, http://en.asaninst.org/contents/issue-brief-no-46-the-fallout-south-korean-public-opinion-following-north-koreas-third-nuclear-test/.

2 Jonathan D. Pollack and Mitchell B. Reiss, ‘South Korea: The Tyranny of Geography and the Vexations of History’, in Kurt Campbell et al. (eds), The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices (Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2004), Chapter Ten, p. 262.

3 South Korea did not overtake the North in per capita output until the mid-1970s. During that decade, North Korean forces outnumbered the South's three to one, and the ROK did not yet have a qualitative edge.

4 The Guam Doctrine, or Nixon Doctrine as it is often called, affirmed that the US would supply arms but not military forces to its allies, who were expected to take primary responsibility for their defence.

5 Pollack and Reiss, ‘South Korea’, p. 261.

6 Seung-young Kim, ‘Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles: The South Korean Case, 1970–82’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, vol. 12, no. 4, December 2001, p. 55; Peter Hayes, Moon Chung-in and Scott Bruce, ‘Park Chung Hee, the US– ROK Strategic Relationship, and the Bomb’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 31 October 2011, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Scott-Bruce/3630.

7 Selig Harrison, ‘North Korea and the Future of East Asia Nuclear Stability’, in N. S. Sisodia, V. Krishnappa and Priyanka Singh (eds), Proliferation and Emerging Nuclear Order in the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2009), p. 54.

8 Peter Hayes, ‘The Republic of Korea and the Nuclear Issue’, in Andrew Mack (ed.), Asian Flashpoints: Security and the Korean Peninsula (Canberra: Allen and Unwin, 1993), Chapter Six, p. 52.

9 Kang Choi and Joon-sung Park, ‘South Korea: Fears of Abandonment and Entrapment’, in Muthiah Alagappa (ed.), The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), Chapter 13, p. 399.

10 Taewoo Kim, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Future: Temptation, Frustration and Vision’, paper presented to the conference ‘Over the Horizon: WMD Proliferation 2020’, Center for Contemporary Conflict, Singapore, 12–13 September 2007, pp. 7–8.

11 Kim, ‘Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles’, p. 69.

12 US Department of State, ‘ROK Plans to Develop Nuclear Weapons and Missiles’, 4 March 1975, available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114616; US Embassy in Seoul, ‘ROK Plans to Develop Nuclear Weapons and Missiles’, 12 March 1975, available at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114615.

13 ‘Seoul Planned Nuclear Weapons until 1991’, Jane's Defence Weekly, 2 April 1994, p. 6, cited in T.V. Paul, Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montreal: McGill-Queen´s University Press, 2000), p. 121.

14 Interview with Jo Dong-joon,August 2014. See Lee Eun-Young, ‘ADD mugigaebal 3chongsaui haegmisail gaebalbihwa (Oral Testimony from the Three Engineers for Weapons Development in ADD)’, ShinDongA, December 2006, http://shindonga.donga.com/docs/magazine/shin/2006/12/13/200612130500004/200612130500004_1.html.

15 Kori-1, a commercial nuclear reactor, began operation in 1978 and could have been used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, but this option was never explored, as far as is known.

16 Choi and Park, ‘South Korea’, p. 378.

17 Discussions in Seoul, July and November 2014.

18 Kim, ‘Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles’, p. 60.

19 Hayes, Moon and Bruce, ‘Park Chung Hee, the US–ROK Strategic Relationship, and the Bomb’.

20 Harrison, ‘North Korea and the Future of East Asia Nuclear Stability’, p. 56. See also Paul, Power versus Prudence: p. 121.

21 The statement is available in English at http://fas.org/news/skorea/1991/911108-d4111.htm.

22 Brookings Institution, ‘50 Facts about Nuclear Weapons Today’, 28 April 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2014/04/28-50-nuclear-facts.

23 Chung Won-shik and Yon Hyong-muk, ‘Joint Declaration of South and North Korea on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’, 19 February 1992, http://cns.miis.edu/inventory/pdfs/aptkoreanuc.pdf.

24 Interviews with scholars and former officials in Seoul, July and August 2014.

25 See Kim, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Future’, pp. 12–13; and Harrison, ‘North Korea and the Future of East Asia Nuclear Stability’, pp. 56–7.

26 Kim, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Future’, pp. 17–18.

27 IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Republic of Korea’, 11 November 2004, paragraphs 12, 15, 22, 37.

28 Ibid., paragraphs 27–34.

29 Pierre Goldschmidt, ‘Exposing Nuclear Non-compliance’, Survival, vol. 51, no. 1, February–March 2009, p. 153.

30 IAEA, ‘IAEA Board Concludes Consideration of Safeguards in South Korea’, 26 November 2004, http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2004/south_korea.html.

31 Interview in Seoul, July 2014.

32 IAEA, ‘Safeguards Implementation Report for 2007’, May 2008, paragraphs 34–5, http://www.iaea.org/safeguards/documents/es2007.pdf. The broader conclusion under the Additional Protocol goes beyond the conclusions the IAEA is able to make under the comprehensive safeguards, which are limited to declared nuclear material and facilities.

33 Kim, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Future’, pp. 18–19.

34 Interviews in South Korea, August and October 2014.

35 World Nuclear Association, ‘Nuclear Power in South Korea’, updated October 2015, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-O-S/South-Korea/.

36 Mok Yong Jae, ‘South Overjoyed with Missile Victory’, Daily NK, 8 October 2012, http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=9890.

37 Jeffrey Lewis, ‘Missiles Away!’, Foreign Policy, 9 October 2012, http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/09/missiles-away/.

38 Daniel Pinkston, ‘The New South Korean Missile Guidelines and Future Prospects for Regional Stability’, International Crisis Group, 25 October 2012, http://blog.crisisgroup.org/asia/2012/10/25/the-new-south-korean-missile-guidelines-and-future-prospects-for-regional-stability/.

39 Jungmin Kang and Harold Feiveson, ‘South Korea's Shifting and Controversial Interest in Spent Fuel Reprocessing’, Nonproliferation Review, Spring 2001, p. 71.

40 Meeyoung Cho, ‘As Nuclear Waste Piles Up, South Korea Faces Storage Crisis’, Scientific American, 12 October 2014, cited in Toby Dalton and Alexandra Francis, ‘South Korea's Search for Nuclear Sovereignty’, National Bureau of Asian Research, Asian Policy, no. 19, January 2015, p. 123, http://nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=797.

41 Duyeon Kim, ‘Beyond the Politics of the U.S.–South Korea 123 Agreement’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 29 October 2014, http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/10/29/beyond-politics-of-u.s.-south-korea-123-agreement/ht2o.

42 Under US law, advance consent is required to enrich or reprocess nuclear material that was supplied by the US or used in US-supplied reactors. Either condition makes it ‘US-obligated’.

43 Dalton and Francis, ‘South Korea's Search for Nuclear Sovereignty’.

44 Kim, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Future’, p. 37.

45 Discussions in London, September 2012, and Seoul, August 2014.

46 Interview in Washington, September 2014.

47 Discussion in Seoul, July 2014.

48 Chen Kane, Stephanie C. Lieggi and Miles A. Pomper, ‘Time for Leadership: South Korea and Nuclear Nonproliferation’, Arms Control Today, March 2011, https://www.armscontrol.org/print/4722.

49 Fred McGoldrick, ‘The New Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Agreement Between South Korea and the United States: From Dependence to Parity’, Korea Economic Institute of America, September 2015, http://blog.keia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/KEI_Special-Studies_Web-final.pdf.

50 Soo-Yeon Kim, ‘New S. Korea–U.S. Nuke Deal to be “Win–Win” for Both: Einhorn’, Yonhap, 19 March 2015, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/interview/2015/03/19/71/0800000000AEN20150319006700315F.html.

51 US General Accounting Office, ‘Quick and Secret Construction of Plutonium Reprocessing Plants: A Way to Nuclear Weapons Proliferation?’, 6 October 1978, ht tp:/ / archive.gao.gov/ f0902c/107377.pdf. See also Hayes, ‘The Republic of Korea and the Nuclear Issue’, p. 53.

52 Low burn-up spent fuel has a high percentage of the fissile isotope Pu-239, which is ideal for producing nuclear weapons. South Korea's four heavy-water reactors at Wolsong typically produce spent fuel with a plutonium mix of 66.6% Pu-239, 26.6% Pu-240 and 5.3% Pu-241, which is considered reactor-grade and suboptimal for use in weapons. The spent fuel would have a lower percentage of the Pu-240 isotope if it were extracted after a shorter than normal period of operation. See Charles D. Ferguson, ‘How South Korea Could Acquire and Deploy Nuclear Weapons’, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, May 2015, pp. 11–12, http://npolicy.org/books/East_Asia/Ch4_Ferguson.pdf.

53 Young-sun Ha, ‘Nuclearization of Small States and World Order’, Asian Survey, no. 28, November 1978, pp. 1,137, 1,140. Ha did not spell out the factors that went into his four- to six-year timeline, other than to say that a separation plant could be built in a year or two.

54 James Clay Moltz, ‘Future Nuclear Proliferation Scenarios in Northeast Asia’, Nonproliferation Review, vol. 13, no. 3, November 2006, p. 595.

55 David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1997), p. 365.

56 Kane, Lieggi and Pomper, ‘Time for Leadership’.

57 Kim, ‘The Fallout’.

58 Cheon Seongwhun, ‘South Korea's Responses to North Korea's Missile Launch’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 14 May 2012, http://csis.org/files/publication/120514_CheonPlatform.pdf.

59 64% according to Gallup Korea. ‘2/3 of S.Koreans Support Nuclear Armament’, Chosun Ilbo, 21 February 2013, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/02/21/2013022100645.html. 62% according to Munhwa Ilbo poll, as cited in Toby Dalton and Alexandra Francis, ‘South Korea's Search for Nuclear Sovereignty’, National Bureau of Asian Research, Asia Policy, no. 19, January 2015, http://nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=797.

60 ‘South Korean Opinion Polls: Majority Favors Nuclear Weapons; 1980s Generation Questions U.S. Ties’, WMD Insights, p. 2, http://cns.miis.edu/wmd_insights/WMDInsights_2006_01.pdf.

61 Norman D. Levin and Yong-Sup Han, ‘The Shape of Korea's Future: South Korean Attitudes toward Unification and Long-Term Security Issues’, RAND Corporation, 1999, p. 23, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1092.html.

62 Seong-whun Cheon, ‘A Tactical Step That Makes Sense for South Korea’, Global Asia, vol. 7, no. 2, Summer 2012.

63 See, for example, comments by Yang Uk in Choi He-suk, ‘S. Korea Cautions against Deployment of US Tactical Nukes’, Jakarta Post, 14 May 2012.

64 The March 2011 opinion poll conducted by Realmeter and tv-N found 72.5% support for South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons and 69.1% support for the reintroduction of American nuclear weapons. Cheon, ‘South Korea's Responses to North Korea's Missile Launch’.

65 Josh Rogin, ‘House Pushes Obama Administration to Consider Tactical NukesinSouthKorea’,ForeignPolicy, 10 May 2012, http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/05/10/house-pushes-obama-administration-to-consider-tactical-nukes-in-south-korea/.

66 Interviews with scholars involved in the poll, March and May 2015. The poll results have not been made public.

67 Jonathan Pollack and Mitchell Reiss wrote in 2004: ‘notably absent from the political right's views is any consideration of a renewed nuclear weapons option … If there are any advocates of a “Gaullist” position in the ROK, their voices are not heard, at least not at present.’ Pollack and Reiss, ‘South Korea’, pp. 272–3.

68 Toby Dalton and Ho Jin-yoon, ‘Reading into South Korea's Nuclear Debate’, Asia Times, 21 March 2013, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KOR-01-210313.html.

69 Former National Security Advisor Chun Yungwoo has said: ‘when I meet with generals, most say they believe that to deter North Korea having our own nuclear weapons would help. When they hear me explain the consequences, however, they realize they hadn't thought it through.’ Discussion with the author. See also Ralph Cossa, ‘US Nuclear Weapons to South Korea?’, 38 North, 13 July 2011, http://38north.org/2011/07/rcossa071211/.

70 ‘N. Korea Threatens to Turn S. Korea into “Sea of Fire” Over Leaflets’, Yonhap, 14 August 2015, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2015/08/14/37/0301000000AEN20150814004900315F.html.

71 Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security, Adelphi 418–19 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2010).

72 Kim, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Future’, pp. 26–7.

73 Interview with former senior official in Seoul, February 2015.

74 Joel S. Wit and Sun Young Ahn, ‘North Korea's Nuclear Futures: Technology and Strategy’, US–Korea Institute at SAIS, February 2015, http://38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/NKNF-NK-Nuclear-Futures-Wit-0215.pdf.

75 Jeremy Page and Jay Solomon, ‘China Warns North Korean Threat is Rising’, Wall Street Journal, 22 April 2015.

76 Kim Young-jin, ‘Chung Calls for Nuke Redeployment’, Korea Times, 11 May 2012.

77 Interview in Seoul, August 2014.

78 Comments by Lee Chun-geun of the Korea Economic Research Institute, cited in Dalton and Yoon, ‘Reading into South Korea's Nuclear Debate’.

79 Hayes, Moon and Bruce, ‘Park Chung Hee, the US–ROK Strategic Relationship, and the Bomb’.

80 Gerard Baker and Alistair Gale, ‘South Korea President Warns on Nuclear Domino Effect’, Wall Street Journal, 29 May 2014.

81 ‘Park Asks China to Help Dissuade N. Korea from Nuclear Test’, Yonhap, 23 April 2014, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/yonhap-news-agency/140423/park-asks-china-help-dissuade-n-korea-nuclear-test-0.

82 Choi Kang et al., ‘South Korean Attitudes on the Korea–US Alliance and Northeast Asia’, Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 24 April 2014, http://en.asaninst.org/contents/asan-report-south-korean-attitudes-on-the-korea-us-alliance-and-northeast-asia/.

83 Donald S. Zagoria, ‘NCAFP Fact-Finding Mission to Seoul, Taipei, Beijing and Tokyo October 18 – November 2, 2014’, National Committee on American Foreign Policy, November 2014, https://www.ncafp.org/ncafp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/NCAFP-Asia-Trip-Report_November-2014.pdf.

84 Pollack and Reiss, ‘South Korea’, p. 267.

85 Christopher W. Hughes, ‘North Korea's Nuclear Weapons: Implications for the Nuclear Ambitions of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan’, Asia Policy, no. 3, January 2007, p. 98.

86 Hayes, Moon and Bruce, ‘Park Chung Hee, the US–ROK Strategic Relationship, and the Bomb’.

87 US Department of Defense, ‘Press Briefing by Admiral Gortney in the Pentagon Briefing Room’, 7 April 2015, http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5612.

88 Scott Snyder, ‘South Korean Nuclear Decision Making’, in William Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova (eds), Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 171.

89 John S. Park, ‘Nuclear Ambition and Tension on the Korean Peninsula’, in Ashley J. Tellis et al. (eds), Strategic Asia 2013–14: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age (Washington DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, October 2013), p. 198.

90 Kim Taewoo, ‘Role of Conventional Weapons & Missile Defense in East Asia: A South Korean Perspective’, paper presented at the U.S.–Japan– ROK Dialogue on Nuclear Issues, Washington DC, 28 February–1 March, 2011, p. 3.

91 Scott Snyder, ‘U.S. Rebalancing Strategy and South Korea's Middle Power Diplomacy’, East Asia Institute, February 2015, http://www.eai.or.kr/data/bbs/eng_report/2015030618362920.pdf.

92 Interviews in Washington, March 2015. Richard Samuels and James L. Schoff, ‘Japan's Nuclear Hedge: Beyond “Allergy” and Breakout’, in Ashley J. Tellis et al. (eds), Strategic Asia 2013–14: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age (Washington DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, October 2013), p. 247.

93 Not all Koreans hold this view, of course. A senior government official and a leading academic in the nuclear field both said in October 2014 that the US security commitment is a more important variable than whether Japan were to go nuclear. Discussions with the author.

94 Peter Hayes and Chung-in Moon, ‘Korea: Will South Korea's Non-Nuclear Strategy Defeat North Korea's Nuclear Break-out?’, in George P. Shultz and James E. Goodby (eds), The War That Must Never Be Fought: Dilemmas of Nuclear Deterrence (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2015), Chapter 13, p. 394.

95 Discussion in Seoul, July 2014.

96 Snyder, ‘South Korean Nuclear Decision Making’, p. 178.

97 Interview in Seoul, July 2014.

98 Quoted in John Lee, ‘The Strategic Cost of South Korea's Japan Bashing’, Hudson Institute, 5 November 2014, http://www.hudson.org/research/10775-the-strategic-cost-of-south-korea-s-japan-bashing.

99 The Genron NPO and East Asia Institute, ‘The 2nd Joint Japan– South Korea Public Opinion Poll (2014) Analysis Report on Comparative Data’, 16 July 2014, http://www.genron-npo.net/pdf/forum_1407_en.pdf.

100 Snyder, ‘South Korean Nuclear Decision Making’, pp. 178–9.

101 Kim Jiyoon et al., ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Korea–Japan Relations in 2014’, Asan Institute for Policy Studies, March 2014, http://en.asaninst.org/contents/challenges-and-opportunities-for-korea-japan-relations-in-2014/.

102 Kim Jiyoon et al., ‘South Korean Attitudes on China’, Asan Institute for Policy Studies, July 2014, http://en.asaninst.org/contents/south-korean-attitudes-on-china/.

103 Kim, ‘Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles’, pp. 72–3.

104 Interview in Seoul, August 2014.

105 Address by President Park Geun-hye to the United Nations General Assembly, 24 September 2014, http://www.un.org/en/ga/69/meetings/gadebate/pdf/KR_en.pdf; remarks by Yun Byung-se, ‘Journey to One Korea, One Korea Night’, Davos, 22 January 2015, http://www.mofa.go.kr/webmodule/htsboard/template/read/engreadboard.jsp?typeID=12&boardid=14137&seqno=314816.

106 Pollack and Reiss, ‘South Korea’, pp. 282, 285.

107 The Rose of Sharon is the ROK national flower. On a similar theme, a 1999 action movie, Yuryong (Phantom: The Submarine) depicts threatened nuclear attacks against Japan by a renegade ROK nuclear submarine. See Kim, ‘Security, Nationalism and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons and Missiles’, p. 74.

108 Moltz, ‘Future Nuclear Proliferation Scenarios in Northeast Asia’, p. 600.

109 Mark Hibbs, ‘Will South Korea Go Nuclear?’, Foreign Policy, 15 March 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/15/will-south-korea-go-nuclear/.

110 Dianne E. Rennack, ‘India and Pakistan: U.S. Economic Sanctions’, Congressional Research Service, 3 February 2003, available at https://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RS20995.pdf.

111 Etel Soligen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia & the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 82–99.

112 Elbridge Colby, ‘Choose Geopolitics Over Nonproliferation’, National Interest, 28 February 2014.

113 This view is voiced, for example, by Lee Choon-gun, head of the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy, who points to the example of US acquiescence to Israel's nuclear programme. See Jihae Lee, ‘A Case for the Development of Nuclear Weapons in SK’, Daily NK, 29 June 2015, http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk02501&num=13310. Pulling out of the NPT to overtly acquire nuclear weapons would be viewed as far worse than not joining the treaty and quietly going nuclear.

114 Philip Iglauer, ‘Nuclear Weapons for South Korea’, Diplomat, 14 August 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/nuclear-weapons-for-south-korea/.

115 Hyon-Sang Ahn, ‘Will South Korea Develop Nuclear Weapons?’, paper presented at the research seminar ‘Nuclear Proliferation Trends and Trigger Events’, James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, Monterey, CA, Spring 2010. Ahn, an ROK diplomat, wrote the paper in a personal capacity.

116 Hayes, Moon and Bruce, ‘Park Chung Hee, the US–ROK Strategic Relationship, and the Bomb’.

117 Iglauer, ‘Nuclear Weapons for South Korea’.

118 Choi and Park, ‘South Korea’, Chapter 13, p. 395.

119 Lee Chung Min, ‘South Korea's Strategic Thinking on North Korea and Beyond’, Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 7 October 2013, http://www.theasanforum.org/south-koreas-strategic-thinking-on-north-korea-and-beyond/.

* Per IISS practice, Korean names are written according to the Korean style of family name first, except for in citations of materials, in which they are listed according to the publication referenced.