Korea and energy for peace

By Bernard Rowan

As an advanced nation, South Korea is a bona fide member of the nuclear club, by which I mean the 31 nations with the ability to create nuclear power for civilian purposes.

Nuclear power is a sustainable and high value form of energy that could provide much of the earth’s growing populations with their needs for years to come. It is not free of challenges and environmental concerns. It also has been translated into weapons of mass destruction.

South Korea is not a member of the much more limited group of nations that have nuclear weapons. Recent negotiations between the United States and South Korea regarding the status of nuclear weapons on the peninsula contributed to a spike in tensions between the North and South. This is likely true after we strip away from related discussions the varnish of ideology and the acknowledgement that the North Korean government and society are dysfunctional. At the end of the day, if South Korea were to begin to reprocess spent fuel or to create nuclear weapons itself, tensions on the peninsula would increase.

I also would argue that this situation isn’t really fair to South Korea, a status quo nation in terms of global geopolitics and a proponent of democracy and capitalism. Korea’s national security should be its own to decide. The alliance with the United States also presents an opportunity over time to make the “pivot to Asia” something more than rhetoric.

Teams of South Koreans and Americans wherein South Koreans acquire operational command in time over existing nukes could provide a basis for compromise, for South Korea to acquire greater control over its national defense, and to avoid missile proliferation in a way that does not de-stabilize the peninsula.

“In time” is no small phrase in this supposition, and this would be no small change indeed. There is in place today a nuclear deterrent to any misadventure of threatening South Korea. That will not change.

This column concerns South Korea’s trajectory in terms of energy development, security and global leadership in the first nuclear club. In terms of civilian nuclear energy, South Korea already is a leader.

As one of the essays in the recent Korea Institute of Public Administration work, “From Rags to Riches,” indicates, South Korea has become a key player in the provision of nuclear power and, more specifically, in exporting this technology to other nations.

The future of world power will surely favor nations that can harness renewable energy sources for the betterment of their people and for the entire world community. South Korea has strengths in nuclear energy, rechargeable batteries, liquefied natural gas (LNG), fuel cells and photovoltaics. It should continue to invest significantly in their research and development. Other nations are at work on geothermal energy technologies, biofuels and wind energy.

The so-called clean energy revolution should be an energy for peace revolution. Technologies should be shared via the United Nations and developed through partnerships of advanced and developing nations to generalize the technologies and their use.

This itself could discourage the translation of energy technologies into weapons for military power or their development in these directions. Nations that have the energy they need are less likely to threaten others, other things being equal.

At present, the future of the planet is tied overmuch to nuclear energy, a kind of energy that is inextricably bound up with the issue of whether to transition peaceful civilian capability into an offensive or defensive and deterrent military capability. Moreover, it is a kind of energy that many countries cannot expect to access for years to come.

I hope that South Korea will work to develop a form or forms of energy and related technologies that could transcend the context of peaceful energy scarcity. South Korea can be a leader to chart the global community toward an era of sustainable and clean energy that is bound up with peace and does not invite the turn to hard military power.

In other words, over the course of the 21st century, the best types of energy to develop for a growing population and a peaceful world have yet to be created and operationalized. This is where KIST, KAIST and other bodies of experts can focus.

Other advanced nations should join South Korea in this innovation. The United States, the E.U., Japan and China also should partner for peaceful energy to extend the frontiers of time for international development, peace and prosperity. We really need a change in global culture in this direction.

This is a real opportunity behind the debate regarding nuclear energy and weaponry for advanced nations such as South Korea ― and for the entire world.

Bernard Rowan is director of assessment and program quality, professor of political science and faculty athletics representative at Chicago State University, where he has taught for 20 years. Rowan is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor of the Graduate School of Local Autonomy, Hanyang University.