South Koreans prefer own nuclear deterrent over U.S. troops: Survey

The USS Kentucky, a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine, is anchored at the Busan Naval Base in Busan on July 19, 2023. [AP/YONHAP]

More South Koreans support the development of an independent nuclear deterrent over maintaining the presence of U.S. troops inside the country, according to a poll published by a government-run think tank on Thursday.

The survey, conducted by the Korea Institute of National Unification (KINU), found that 44.6 percent of respondents said they would choose development and possession of an independent nuclear arsenal over keeping the U.S. military presence in South Korea, while 40.1 percent said they preferred the opposite.

This year’s KINU survey marked the first time that more respondents said they would rather the country develop an independent nuclear deterrent than host U.S. troops.

While 66.9 percent of respondents said they had faith in the U.S. extended deterrence commitment to South Korea, that figure represented a decline from the 72.1-percent support recorded in the same survey last year.

On the other hand, overall support for the country possessing its own nuclear deterrent rose by 5.8 percentage points to 66 percent this year. Public support for an independent nuclear arsenal peaked at 71.3 percent in the 2021 survey.

Prof. Suh Kune-yull, a nuclear physicist at Seoul National University and longtime proponent of South Korean nuclear armament, told the JoongAng Ilbo that the country would “likely be able to produce a plutonium-based prototype within eight weeks if it creates a team of 150 experts dedicated to developing nuclear weapons like the Manhattan Project.”

Although other South Korean experts generally agree that the country would be able to develop nuclear weapons if it commits to doing so, the costs of such a decision would likely pose a significant burden to the economy.

According to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal from 2023 to 2032 is projected to cost $756 billion, or approximately $75.6 billion per year — almost twice as much as South Korea’s entire annual defense budget of 57 trillion won ($41.1 billion).

While a hypothetical South Korean arsenal would likely be much smaller than its U.S. counterpart, the logistics and components of a credible deterrent would likely not differ greatly insofar that it would require maintaining and guarding a wide range of storage and delivery systems, such as ballistic missile submarines, bomber aircraft and ground-based missile launch systems.

A decision by Seoul to develop nuclear weapons would also likely significantly stress the South Korea-U.S. alliance.

Under the allies’ nuclear cooperation agreement, South Korea is banned from reprocessing used nuclear fuel and limited to enriching uranium up to 20 percent, far below the 90 percent required for weapons-grade material.

If it were to develop nuclear weapons, Seoul would not only be breaking its status as a trusted nonproliferation partner for Washington but also violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty, under which the country has been able to access materials for civilian uses of nuclear power.

In an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, Prof. Kim Hyun-wook of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy said that South Korea “should consider the response of neighboring countries and the international fallout it would suffer, as well as the domino effect of nuclear proliferation it could trigger.”

Experts also believe that a South Korean decision to develop nuclear weapons would place North Korean nuclear disarmament further out of reach by providing regime leader Kim Jong-un with further justification to keep his arsenal.

BY LEE YU-JEONG, LEE KEUN-PYUNG, MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]