washington — South Koreans are keeping a close eye on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, scrambling to determine the implications its outcome would have for the security of their country.
A recent poll by South Korea’s Institute of National Unification showed that about 66% of respondents supported the country having its own nuclear weapons. This has spurred heated debate among the South Korean public.
Earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the delivery of 250 new tactical ballistic missile launchers to frontline troops, according to the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The missile launchers appear to be transporter erector launcher vehicles for a type of short-range ballistic missile that North Korea claimed could be fitted with nuclear warheads. If confirmed, analysts say, the deployment would overwhelm South Korea’s missile defenses.
Growing concern
“In order to cope with the threat from the North, South Korea needs to be nuclear-armed,” Kim Tae-woo, head researcher of nuclear security at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs (KIMA), told VOA Korean on Tuesday. “There is no other way to guarantee the survival of the country.”
Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Department of Reunification Strategy Studies at the Seoul-based Sejong Institute, said the North Korean threat is too close to home for South Koreans.
“There is no other country in the world that makes frequent nuclear threats against a neighboring country in the way North Korea does against South Korea,” Cheong told VOA Korean on Wednesday.
Kim of the KIMA said that a strengthening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent through the bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) would not be sufficient to protect South Korea against a North Korean nuclear attack.
“First, it won’t be able to keep up with North Korea’s nuclear threat in terms of the pace and the extent of evolution and growth,” Kim said. “Second, there is a growing risk that political changes in South Korea and the United States may halt the arrangement or make it less binding.”
Extended deterrence
In April 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol adopted the Washington Declaration, which outlines a series of measures, including the establishment of the NCG, to deter North Korea’s nuclear weapons use. At its core, the declaration expanded Washington’s promise to defend South Korea with nuclear weapons if necessary — a policy known as “extended deterrence.”
The Biden administration appears firmly opposed to South Korea building its own nuclear weapons.
“We believe that the only effective way to reduce nuclear threats on the peninsula is by curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement on July 10 in response to a VOA Korean inquiry.
“President Yoon has reaffirmed the ROK’s long-standing commitment to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as the cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime,” the email continued.
ROK stands for Republic of Korea, the official name of South Korea.
“The Yoon administration has made clear that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program and that it is working closely with the United States through existing extended deterrence mechanisms,” the spokesperson said.
Vipin Narang, who recently served as the U.S. acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said that the NCG would play an important role in strengthening the U.S.-South Korea extended nuclear deterrence relationship.
“We have signed a guidelines document charting a path ahead, begun work to facilitate integration across the alliance, and now stand as equal partners strengthening deterrence against nuclear and other forms of strategic attack from North Korea,” Narang said August 1 in a seminar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Narang added that the United States “may reach a point where a change in the size or posture of our current deployed forces is necessary” if there is no change in the nuclear trajectories of North Korea.
In an interview with VOA Korean in July, Narang emphasized that the NCG would “evolve in accordance with the threats faced by the U.S.-South Korea alliance.”
Seoul’s nuclear desire
Some experts say the possible reelection in November of former U.S. President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, could reshape Washington’s alliance with Seoul and open the possibility of South Korea having its own nuclear weapons.
John Bolton, former White House national security adviser during the Trump administration, told VOA Korean in an August 16 interview that “Trump doesn’t understand collective defense alliances.”
“He looks at alliances as America defending South Korea and not getting paid for it,” said Bolton, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006.
“He didn’t, in his first four years, grasp what the meaning of the alliance, the benefits it had for the United States as well as for South Korea,” he said. “I don’t think he’s learned in the four years he’s been out of the office either.”
Cheong of the Sejong Institute said, “President Trump had previously held that South Korea and Japan should now be nuclear armed rather than relying on foreign countries to respond to the threat of North Korea and China.”
Separate from Seoul’s desire for its own nuclear weapons, Trump might consider redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, said Robert Peters, research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation.
“I think it is possible that a Trump administration could see the current environment as one where they would return American nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, to be stored in nuclear weapons vaults on joint U.S.-ROK bases,” Peters told VOA Korean via email on Wednesday.
In 1991, the U.S. withdrew all its nuclear weapons from South Korea. The weapons had been stationed there since the late 1950s.
Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia and Korea chair at CSIS, told VOA Korean on Wednesday via email that it was too early to determine what position Trump would take on South Korea’s nuclear armament.
“I think it’s way too premature to talk about whether Trump would support or oppose a nuclear South Korea,” said Cha, who was the U.S. National Security Council’s director for Asian affairs in the George W. Bush White House.
“The nonproliferation community, both Democrats and Republicans, would be strongly against adding more nuclear weapons states in either a Harris or Trump administration,” said Cha.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is widely expected to inherit Biden’s Asia policies should she win the election.
VOA Korean contacted both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign and asked each whether its candidate would allow South Korea to have its own nuclear weapons, but did not receive a reply from either side.
Kim Hyungjin contributed to this report.
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