80 years on: Reflecting on South Korea’s anti-nuclear history
Joel Petersson-Ivre
Next month, South Korea and Japan will mark two 80-year anniversaries. On Aug. 6 and 9, Japan will remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One week later, on Aug. 15, South Korea celebrates its independence from Japan.
The coincidence of the two anniversaries is of course no coincidence at all. Following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Empire of Japan capitulated to the United States, putting an end to World War II — and to Japan’s brutal colonial rule over Korea.
It is an ironic consequence of history that even as the bombs contributed to the liberation of Korea, as many as 40,000 Koreans residing in the two Japanese cities perished to them. The survivors and their children still live with the mark of the bomb today. Yet despite the history of nuclear victimhood, the anti-nuclear weapons movement in South Korea is weak, compared to other popular movements like the more successful anti-nuclear power movement.
A nuclear outlier
To understand why, it is helpful to compare the South Korean public’s acceptance of nuclear weapons with its far more divided view on nuclear power. Few polls record attitudes to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power, but comparing international polls that cover one or the other seem to indicate that South Korea is somewhat of an outlier.
Across the world, populaces that dislike nuclear weapons tend to dislike nuclear power equally. Based on the 2024 Public Attitudes toward Clean Energy (PACE) poll, the support for nuclear power in countries like Australia, Spain, Germany and Italy is generally no more than a few percentage points higher or lower than support for nuclear weapons, as recorded by a recent YouGov poll. The same can be said for Japan.
In South Korea, however, polls regularly report that two-thirds to three-quarters of the population support nuclear armament, while only 42 percent support nuclear power, according to PACE. This is a difference of 27 percentage points. The difference largely disappears when survey respondents are asked about the cost of armament, but it is worth noting that in the YouGov poll, the European respondents were not asked about costs. This suggests some fundamental difference in how South Koreans and others think about nuclear weapons.
Of course, these are different polls, asked at different times to different people about different technologies. But it raises the question of why the South Korean public appears to favor the fearsome weapon over the peaceful technology. Why not neither? Why not both?
Diverging paths
It has not always been this way. Opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear power long went hand in hand, until the end of the Cold War and South Korea’s rise as an industrialized democracy caused them to diverge.
During the 1980s, when the United States still stationed nuclear weapons in South Korea, protests against nuclear weapons were commonplace, and often centered around anti-American slogans. At the same time, South Korea was rapidly expanding its nuclear power, building eight reactors in that decade alone. Animated by the Chernobyl disaster, the peak of the Cold War arms race, “anti-nuclear” meant opposing both weapons and power plants.
After the United States withdrew its weapons from South Korea in the early 1990s as part of a global disarmament effort, the raison d’être of the anti-nuclear weapons movement disappeared overnight. Nuclear weapons faded into the background on the Korean Peninsula. When they reemerged with North Korea’s nuclear test a decade and a half later, the anti-nuclear weapons movement, so centered on anti-Americanism, was ill-positioned to oppose the gradual reemergence of the independent nuclear armament option in the public debate.
Meanwhile, South Korea needed plenty of power for its rapid ascent to fully industrialized status. For the South Korean anti-nuclear movement, this was a target-rich environment, and the country’s democratization gave it more tools to advance its opposition. Through hard-fought campaigns, demonstrations and appeal to not-in-my-backyard sentiments, the anti-nuclear power movement managed to remain a relevant, if far-from-powerful factor in South Korean politics.
The anti-nuclear weapons movement today
This history shows that a political movement needs a cause to exist, lest it withers. But what cause can animate the South Korean public to oppose nuclear weapons, short of their actual return to the Korean Peninsula south of the 38th parallel?
The strongest voices of the anti-nuclear weapons movement in South Korea today belong to the small group of survivors of the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to their descendants. They have suffered lifelong illness, genetic disease and ostracization, all the while struggling for recognition and justice. Their advocacy is aimed at seeking accountability for the grave injustice that these indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction inflicted upon them. With limited resources and scant, often symbolic attention, they have not been able to make much of an impression on South Koreans’ views of nuclear weapons.
As this nation — born at the dawn of the nuclear age — celebrates its 80th birthday and honors the memories of those who gave their lives for Korean independence, the stories of these survivors also deserve to be celebrated, their voices elevated and their cause supported. With an understanding of the true human consequences of nuclear weapons, perhaps the South Korean public’s eagerness to acquire the bomb might be tempered?
Joel Petersson-Ivre is a policy fellow at Asia-Pacific Leadership Network.