[Column] Nuclear submarines and the paradoxes of pursuing denuclearization

By Park Chan-su, senior editorial author

“I feel there’s been one thing of a misunderstanding,” Korean President Lee Jae Myung stated in sudden remarks earlier than his summit with US President Donald Trump on Oct. 29.

“We’re not aiming to construct nuclear-armed submarines. Reasonably, assuming that you simply agree to offer the gasoline, we’ll construct nuclear-powered submarines loaded with typical weapons with our personal expertise,” Lee stated.

Eyebrows climbed even increased the subsequent day when Trump wrote on his Reality Social media platform that “I’ve given them approval to construct a Nuclear Powered Submarine, fairly than the old school, and much much less nimble, diesel powered Submarines that they’ve now,” referring to Korea.

That was a really sudden growth.

However shock quickly gave strategy to controversy. Some requested whether or not, within the period of AI, a rustic surrounded by semi-enclosed seas on each east and west actually wants nuclear submarines. Others voiced concern that South Korea’s ongoing integration into the US safety regime will create extra instability in Northeast Asia and speed up the arms race. There are additionally fears that pushback from North Korea could complicate efforts to enhance inter-Korean relations.

The nuclear submarine plan has evoked a flurry of issues relating such points as security and the atmosphere, with extra flack coming from the left than the correct. Since all these observations and criticisms have some extent of benefit, the federal government ought to present them ample consideration because it strikes ahead with the plan.

However I posit that the query of nuclear submarines must be considered not solely from a navy standpoint, but additionally from a political one. Since North Korea has augmented its nuclear arsenal on each a quantitative and qualitative stage, pursuing nuclear submarines would doubtless require reviewing our coverage towards Pyongyang. 

Nuclear-powered submarines have lengthy been on the want listing of progressive governments in South Korea. In June 2003, President Roh Moo-hyun signed off on “Undertaking 362,” an initiative for constructing a nuclear submarine, on the initiative of his protection minister on the time, Cho Yung-kil. 

“On the time, I feel we considered the acquisition of nuclear submarines as a part of protection autonomy, with the aim of defending our waters with out counting on different powers, simply as we have been doing with the Jeju Naval Base close to Gangjeong Village,” remarked a former senior official on the Blue Home.

Former President Moon Jae-in, whereas he was operating for workplace, stated, “The time has come once we want nuclear-powered submarines.” In workplace, Moon floated the concepts of buying nuclear submarines and revising the Korea-US civil nuclear power settlement with Trump (then in his first time period), however the US appeared bored with such concepts.

The New York Instances reported again in 2021 that “in keeping with Moon Chung-in, a former particular adviser to Mr. Moon, President Donald J. Trump made a shocking suggestion: Why didn’t South Korea simply purchase American nuclear submarines?”

However the standing of North Korea’s nuclear growth right now is starkly completely different from when Roh authorised Undertaking 362, with an inevitable impression on the need of buying nuclear-powered submarines.

The Korean authorities’s official title of Undertaking 362 in 2003 was “Atomic Power-Powered Submarine Acquisition Plan.” The final time period used each by the Korean authorities and the press on the time was “atomic power submarines,” fairly than “nuclear-powered submarines.”

“Then I recall ‘nuclear-powered submarine’ being adopted because the standardized time period through the Moon administration,” a authorities official stated. One might hazard a guess that the time period was adopted partially to spotlight the vessels as a method of responding to developments in North Korea’s nuclear program on the time, regardless of not being absolutely geared up with nuclear missiles themselves.

To today, it stays troublesome to separate the nuclear-powered submarine push from the aims of our coverage towards North Korea. Simply earlier than arriving in Gyeongju final week, Trump expressed hopes that he might meet with Kim Jong-un, and referred to North Korea as “kind of a nuclear energy.” Had an impromptu assembly between the leaders of the US and North Korea come to go whereas Trump was in Korea, there’s no telling whether or not the US president would have stated one thing alongside these strains publicly to Kim Jong-un’s face. 

If the US casts apart the nuclear nonproliferation coverage it has so strongly advocated for many years, it leaves us in South Korea with no selection however to reexamine our personal coverage roadmap for North Korea and its aim of denuclearization. 

In my estimation, it’s time for us to assume severely about whether or not an method that, whereas not abandoning the tip aim of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, establishes as middleman objectives a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear program and arms reductions — two notions which have up to now been taboo — is barely extra lifelike.  

If in some unspecified time in the future down the road the US acknowledges North Korea’s nuclear weapons and pursues disarmament, it can solely additional gasoline arguments in South Korea for us to independently arm ourselves with nuclear weapons. 

In the course of the presidential elections in 2022 and 2025, high-ranking Folks Energy Get together politicians overtly referred to as for South Korea to develop its personal nukes or have the US deploy tactical nukes to the nation. 

Not solely do I doubt that the US would give us the OK to arm ourselves with nuclear weapons, however the pursuit of such goals will surely immediate the worldwide neighborhood to impose economy-ruining sanctions on us, to not point out how destabilizing such a pursuit can be to the scenario in Northeast Asia. 
 
That being the case, responding by increasing our asymmetrical tactical weapons, resembling nuclear-powered submarines, could possibly be a extra lifelike choice for preserving the last word aim of denuclearization intact. 

Please direct questions or feedback to [english@hani.co.kr]