By Chung Min-uck
Growing calls from conservative politicians here to go nuclear is bound to hurt national interest as it will unnecessarily impede the ongoing talks between South Korea and the United States to revise their bilateral Atomic Energy Agreement, experts say.
Signed in 1973, the bilateral nuclear energy accord is set to expire in 2014 and the two nations have been in talks to amend it since 2010.
“Seoul will want to pursue uranium enrichment more eagerly on the negotiation table following Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test,” said Daniel Pinkston, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental security think-tank, Sunday. “However, there is no commercially valid reason to seek that capability and I don’t see any benefit for South Korea trying to include that in the agreement.”
Uranium enrichment is essential to developing nuclear arms and the U.S. has been opposing its allies’ desire to acquiring such capability as it could undermine their global nonproliferation efforts.
The accord bans Seoul from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel and Seoul has been requesting the amendment citing “peaceful use of nuclear energy.”
“Including the right to enrich uranium in the accord is a violation of the 1992 Inter-Korean Declaration of Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula signed as well,” Pinkston said.
“The discussion for the revision of ROK-U.S. Atomic Energy Accord should solely focus on South Korea’s commercial use of atomic energy, thus, should be separated from the issue of North Korea going nuclear,” said Whang Joo-ho, president of the Korea Institute of Energy Research. “Developing atomic energy is crucial for the nation as it provides energy effectively and linking it to nuclear armament is against the national interest.”
Politicians here have recently been calling for the need to develop their own nuclear weapons to cope with North Korea’s nuclear threat.
More of such voices are expected to be heard as the incoming government of Park Geun-hye prepares to put the final touches on the amendment talks with the U.S. by the end of this year.
“South Korean politicians’ statements are aimed at domestic audiences without considering the consequences of such action,” Pinkston said. “For those people who are advocating such a response, if you would ask them to surrender their standard of living and live as an international outcast like North Korea, most of them would have second thoughts.”