Time for a nuclear South Korea?
For The Register-Guard
Feb. 21, 2016
South Koreans in high places are calling for building nuclear bombs for their nation’s defense.
“They have been aiming their gun on our head, but we have been responding only with a knife. Is this not the time for us also to take up the gun?” asked Weon Yu-cheol, majority leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, on Feb. 12, following a special party strategy meeting on the new threat of North Korea’s claim of having tested a hydrogen bomb.
Noh Cheol-lae, another high ranking member of the Saenuri Party and a participant in the meeting, agreed: “If we are to undergird the security of the Republic of Korea and guarantee its survival we must go beyond THAAD and arm ourselves with nuclear weapons!” Noh was referring to Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, a powerful missile defense system which South Korea and the U.S. had just agreed to build.
Two days later, Jung Mong-jun, a former seven-term national assemblyman, chairman of Hyundai Heavy Industries and a presidential aspirant, commented on his blog, “On account of the national crisis we now face we need to seriously consider suspending our nation’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
Add to these voices those of Park Se-il, the venerable professor of law emeritus of Seoul National University and president of the Greater Korea United Association; Lee Sang-woo, president of the New Asia Research Institute and the former director of the Committee for National Defense Modernization; Jeong Seong-jang, director of the Unification Strategy at the Sejong Research Institute; the Veterans Association; the Fellowship of Retired Generals and Admirals; and 52 percent of South Korean population in favor of nuclear armament.
Since Kim Jong-un’s recent underground explosion of what he claimed to be a hydrogen bomb, followed by the launching of an intercontinental missile disguised as an Earth observation satellite, the people of South of Korea are in a state of shock.
They are now convinced, finally, that all the efforts of the United States and the United Nations to denuclearize North Korea through dialogue, negotiations and economic sanctions have failed and will continue to fail.
They now firmly believe that Beijing, the only party that has the means and the influence to make the North change, will never use them. Furthermore, they now believe that China has secretly helped the North to develop its nuclear and missile capabilities.
Retired Adm. Kim Seong-man, the former chief of the Republic of Korea Naval Operations and a columnist on national security issues, states in a public declaration, “North Korea’s nuclear program has been developed under Beijing’s secret protection and support because it serves China’s national interests. Surrounded by many nations, China has always sought to weaken its neighbors. To check India, Beijing helped Pakistan to become a nuclear power, and it used Pakistan to help North Korea to develop its nuclear weapons to check the U.S., Japan, and South Korea through them.”
Beijing’s position became starkly clear in the aftermath of the North’s recent nuclear testing, more powerful than all previous tests. President Park Geun-hye immediately sought to talk to President Xi Jinping by phone to solicit his cooperation vis-à-vis Kim Jong-un’s reckless acts. Xi refused. For nearly a month, he turned the cold shoulder — then, on Feb. 4, his agent contacted the Blue House to set up a phone conference between Xi and Park at midnight.
A serious conference with the Korean president at midnight? Seoul treated it as a diplomatic insult and rejected the request. Beijing then suggested 9 p.m. the following day. The conversation, according to the Blue House, had nothing meaningful worth reporting.
All the good will, time, and energy Park and the Seoul government had put in for many years to win Beijing’s cooperation in checking the North, Seoul now realizes, were for nothing. Park went the extra mile to build friendship with Beijing, and even attended China’s World War II victory celebration in Tiananmen Square, to the displeasure of South Korea’s allies. Many Koreans now feel that the Seoul government became a victim of its own wishful thinking and was chasing the wind.
Koreans are not only disappointed but angry with Beijing. Park, reportedly in an angry tone, has told her Cabinet members, “Expect nothing helpful from China!”
It is in that context that the national security experts are calling for South Korea to become a nuclear power. They reason that just as the United States and the Soviet Union coexisted during the Cold War through the deterrent effect of their nuclear arsenals, so the South and the North may coexist through the same.
Noteworthy in this regard is the voice of Jeong Seong-jang, director of the Unification Strategy at the Sejong Research Institute, who has long advocated dialogue as the best means of denuclearizing the North.
“It is now clear,” he admits, “that dialogue alone has failed. What we need is a two-pronged approach: dialogue and nuclear power.” He reasons that currently the military balance is out of whack because of the North’s nuclear power. Once the balance is achieved with the South arming with nuclear weapons, a meaningful dialogue can take place.
Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, states in his just-published paper in Adelphi, titled “Asia’s Latent Nuclear Powers: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan”: “If a new nuclear-armed state were to emerge in northeast Asia it would most likely be the Republic of Korea.” He further states that all three have reasons to become a nuclear power and can achieve it in two years — or less, in the case of Japan.
In the 1970s, Washington vigorously objected to Seoul’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Since then the world has changed much. Then the North had no nuclear bombs and China was not a threat to the United States.
This time, Washington may welcome the clarion call in Seoul for two reasons. First, South Korea’s nuclear arsenal will strengthen America’s Asia-Pacific fleet confronting China. Second, Beijing may act seriously to help denuclearize the North, because otherwise it will be faced with the nightmare of being surrounded by three nuclear powers friendly to the United States.
Song Nai Rhee is academic vice president and dean emeritus at Northwest Christian University and a courtesy research associate in the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the Universit
