AUKUS and South Korea's dilemma

By Peter K. Lee

The Biden administration recently agreed to share its nuclear-powered submarine technology with Australia as part of the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The U.S. has called this arrangement a "one-off" deal, and it is the first time the U.S. has shared such technology, since it did so with the United Kingdom in 1958. The decision is a major milestone for Australia-U.S. relations. Could South Korea be next in line?

Some Korean experts have already argued that the U.S. should now also share its nuclear-powered submarine technology with South Korea. This technology is, after all, a capability that South Korea has seriously considered for many years in light of North Korea's escalating nuclear and ballistic missile threats, and intensifying regional tensions.

The new Dosan Ahn Chang-ho class submarines are currently entering service. Converting their diesel-electric engines to nuclear reactors would greatly extend the submarine fleet's time at sea and their area of operations. In addition, South Korea already has an advanced civil nuclear energy industry and is even exporting nuclear reactors to the Middle East in full compliance with non-proliferation protocols.

This background means that many of the technical issues of training suitably qualified submariners and nuclear experts to operate the reactors would seem far easier than in the case of Australia, which does not have a domestic nuclear industry.

However, the U.S. has thus far refused to support granting this technology to South Korea. What AUKUS reveals is a more fundamental question about how access to U.S. technology and the issue of self-reliance are perceived differently in Australia and South Korea, as well as how the U.S. sees its allies.

For some critics, AUKUS will reduce Australia's sovereignty, make it more reliant on the U.S., and risk entrapping it in a potential future U.S.-China conflict. If this view is correct, then nuclear-powered submarines would similarly undermine South Korea's commitment to greater self-reliance and quest to achieve defense sovereignty.

For supporters however, AUKUS will empower Australia without eroding its sovereignty over how to use the submarines. A great power like the U.S. does not share its military secrets easily. That it has done so without any obvious demands of its own reflects a high level of trust in the Australia-U.S. alliance.

AUKUS has also been tentatively endorsed by Australia's main opposition party in Parliament, the Australian Labor Party, which suggests that there is a bipartisan consensus on its merits, rather than a conservative political ploy to shore up a restored Anglosphere. If this view is correct, then nuclear-powered submarines might similarly empower South Korea and strengthen the Korea-U.S. alliance.

The coming 18 months of Australia-U.K.-U.S. trilateral consultations will determine which interpretation eventually proves more accurate. But it should be recognized that Australia has always relied heavily on U.S. equipment and technologies.

Australia's reliance is because one of its top priorities has been to ensure that its defense force is interoperable with the U.S. in joint military operations. From an Australian perspective, defense self-sufficiency was always undesirable, if not impractical.

The AUKUS announcement highlights a dilemma for South Korea. Over the decades, South Korea has steadily built up its own domestic defense industry and its weapons, vehicles, aircraft and naval vessels are now sold to partner militaries all around the world, including selling its submarines to Indonesia.

Given South Korea's more advanced nuclear technology base and shipbuilding industry, the benefits of closer technological dependence on the U.S. are less clear-cut than for Australia. For example, it is possible that a future South Korean administration could decide to develop indigenous nuclear-powered submarines that maximize Korean sovereignty without relying on the U.S.

South Korea already has most of the means available to build its own nuclear-powered submarines. Australia does not. These differences are important considerations for the U.S. in terms of how it shares its technology with allies.

What the AUKUS agreement instead suggests is that, rather than seeing self-reliance and technological dependence as binary choices, South Korean policymakers should see them as complementary endeavors that can both improve its security. After all, South Korea has not yet achieved total self-sufficiency in military technology. Even today, many of its flagship capabilities, including the locally built KF-21 fighter jet, continue to depend on critical U.S. technologies such as engines.

AUKUS and the provision of nuclear-powered submarines may ultimately prove to be a "one-off" deal between Australia and the U.S. and U.K. The U.S. may continue to resist sharing its nuclear technology with other allies, including South Korea. But that is less a reflection of the Korea-U.S. alliance than it is of South Korea's remarkable success as an advanced defense power in its own right.

Peter K. Lee (peter.lee@anu.edu.au) is a Ph.D. scholar at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.