Terrorist attack with NK nukes could spell crisis for S. Korea: US expert

A terrorist attack that uses a North Korean nuclear bomb could be devastating for South Korea even if it took place elsewhere in a country like the United States, according to a U.S. expert on nuclear terrorism.

The possibility of terrorists detonating a nuclear bomb, and ways to prevent such an event, are expected to be the focus of the March 26-27 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul. The forum is set to bring together 58 heads of state and international organizations, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The biennial summit was launched in Washington in 2010 under Obama's vision for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Speaking Tuesday at a lecture at Yonsei University in Seoul, Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, stressed the relevance of nuclear terrorism for South Korea, which borders nuclear-armed North Korea.

"If you imagine the North Korean regime selling a bomb to some group like Al Qaeda -- maybe to Iran, maybe to a splinter terrorist group in Pakistan -- and they took this nuclear bomb and exploded it in an American city, what's going to happen in North Korea?" the professor asked a lecture room packed with students.

He suggested that the U.S. would take retaliatory action against the communist country, the effects of which would be felt heavily in South Korea.

"By extension, a nuclear bomb that goes loose in North Korea could be the biggest event that ever happened in South Korea even though it didn't explode here," he said.

Allison was in Seoul to meet with President Lee Myung-bak as a member of an international panel tasked with advising Lee ahead of the upcoming summit. The professor was joined by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in the meeting with Lee.

Backing up his argument, Allison noted that North Korea has been accused of helping Syria build the nuclear reactor that Israel eventually bombed in 2007.

"How much bigger than a nuclear bomb is that reactor? More than a thousand times," he said. "Who could imagine you could sell a reactor and get away with it? Well, somebody did."

Allison, who served as a U.S. assistant secretary of defense in 1993-1994, is the author of the 2004 book, "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe." (Yonhap)