By Kang Seung-woo
South Korea should consider asking the United States to redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula to counter North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, a presidential advisory panel said Thursday.
The National Unification Advisory Council (NUAC) made the request ahead of a meeting with President Park Geun-hye at Cheong Wa Dae.
In a report, the council said, “The presence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons as well as its advanced strategic assets in South Korea could help deter North Korea and play a role in pressing China to join international sanctions on the North.”
It also mentioned the U.S. deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe in the 1980s, which acted as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union’s SS-20 missiles pointed at Europe and led the Soviet Union to dismantle its missiles, which partly contributed to the superpower’s collapse.
In the wake of Pyongyang’s two nuclear tests and numerous ballistic missile tests this year, calls for the redeployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to the South are emerging here _ withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula shortly before an inter-Korean denuclearization accord took effect in 1992.
However, President Park has reiterated her commitment to keeping the peninsula free of nuclear weapons, saying that Seoul is covered under the nuclear umbrella of the United States.
Sung Kim, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, also said last month that President Park and U.S. President Barack Obama “have determined that there is no need to reintroduce nuclear weapons on the peninsula.”
The panel also proposed setting up a domestic expert group to evaluate the efficacy of international sanctions.
“In order to change North Korea’s behavior toward denuclearization, the international community’s sanctions are expected to extend over a long period of time. To prepare for a possible extension, we need a comprehensive system to assess how much the punishment sees effects,” it said.
“Like the United Nations Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions Committee, there needs to be a domestic equivalent to strengthen monitoring.”
The advisory council also said the government needs to support North Korea’s ordinary people on humanitarian grounds.
“Humanitarian aid is a policy that can approach the North, distinguishing the North Korean authorities from the people, and it can also assure the people that sanctions are not targeting them,” it said.
Following the North’s fourth nuclear test in January, the government banned inter-Korean exchanges at the non-government level and South Korean citizens’ visits to the North because of concerns that its humanitarian aid may end up being diverted to the North Korean government and the development of its nuclear weapons program.
“Humanitarian aid needs to match international standards not to weaken sanctions on the North and the government needs to consider establishing a system to decide items that can be shipped to the North.”
Meanwhile, President Park met with overseas members of the advisory council at Cheong Wa Dae. Some 530 advisers from 92 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Central Asia attended the meeting.
During the meeting, Park received a briefing on the advisory panel’s activities such as criticizing the repressive state’s recent nuclear test and missile provocations and shedding light on its woeful human rights record, according to the presidential office.
Earlier this year, Park met with other NUAC advisers from the United States, Japan, China, Canada and Central and Latin America.