Some suggest S. Korea should go nuclear

Oren Dorell, USA TODAY | USATODAY

Increasing tensions on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea's nuclear ambitions and provocations are pushing more South Koreans to raise the once unthinkable: developing their own nuclear deterrent, analysts said Monday.

South Korean lawmaker Chung Mong Joon of the governing Saenuri, or New Frontier Party, indicated that the South may have to look into a nuclear deterrent given that North Korea is acting like "a gangster."

The South Korean newspaper Joong Ang Ilbo suggested in an editorial that the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" may not be enough. Although the South is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons treaty, which means the country cannot legally develop nuclear weapons, the newspaper says the North's threats mean new defenses must be considered.

"Nuclear weapons can be stopped only with nuclear weapons, as in the mutual assured destruction that prevented a nuclear conflict during the Cold War," it said.

Bruce Klingner, former deputy chief for Korea in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence under President Bill Clinton, says a nuclear South is a "non-starter."

A nuclear-armed South Korea could cause Japan, a U.S. ally that has tense relations with South Korea, to go nuclear, too, creating unnecessary instability in the northeast Asia region, Klingner said. Besides, he said, South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953 has had the same assurances that the United States would defend it that Western Europe has had since the end of World War II.

"We are bound to defend South Korea by all means necessary," Klingner said. "You can question whether any individual president would trade New York for London or Los Angeles for Seoul, but the guarantee is that we would do so."

Tokyo member of parliament Shintaro Ishihara of the Japan Restoration Party has said Japan should have nuclear bombs to counter China and North Korea. Though its constitution restricts Japan's ability to possess certain weaponry, recently elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe supports revising the document to allow for more military defenses.

Over the weekend, North Korea canceled an armistice agreement that has been in place nearly all of the 60 years since the end of the Korean War. It said it would cut ties such as a telephone "hotline" between the North and South that can be used in times of crisis.

This comes a week after the North threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the USA and all-out war with the South over stricter sanctions passed last week by the United Nations Security Council to punish North Korea for its third test of a nuclear weapon in February and missile tests.

Heightened tensions continue this week as U.S. and South Korean forces engage in a joint military exercise. North Korea's military is holding drills of its own near the line that demarcates North from South. Both sets of exercises are an annual event.

When such a large grouping of military forces are in close proximity to each other, "there's an increased opportunity for a clash," Klingner said.

Despite his belief that a nuclear South is a bad idea, Klingner agreed that North Korea's steady progress toward developing a deliverable nuclear weapon is causing South Korean attitudes to harden.

About 70% of South Koreans say their country should develop its own nuclear deterrent, according to several polls. Several columnists and conservative politicians are questioning whether they can count on the United States to risk a nuclear attack if it comes to the South's defense in a nuclear contest, he said.

Bruce Bechtol, a former China and Korea analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency who teaches at Angelo State University in Texas, said South Koreans are probably right about one thing: Even in the case of a North Korean nuclear attack on the South, the United States would be unlikely to respond with in kind, Bechtol said.

South Korea is under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but the best response to an attack would probably be with conventional weapons, Bechtol said.

"If we're fighting a war with North Korea, the end state of that war would be a unified country with a capital in Seoul," Bechtol said. "If we used nuclear weapons, we'd be creating a mess that the South Koreans would have to deal with. ... My guess would be that the (South Korean) government themselves would want us to use nuclear weapons as a last option."

South Koreans pushing for their own nuclear capability "are anticipating the day when North Korea can hit the continental United States with nuclear weapons," says Richard Bush, who served as an East Asia specialist in the National Intelligence Council under Clinton.

They're asking, "Is the United States willing to sacrifice San Francisco if deterrence fails?" Bush said. "This is the same logic that led Great Britain, France, China and Israel to want their own deterrent."

The South's conservative new president, Park Geun Hye, has not advocated following the nuclear path, but she promised to respond "exponentially" to any North Korean attack. South Koreans were unhappy with her predecessor's restraint in 2010, when North Korea sank a South Korean patrol ship, then shelled the South's Yeonpyeong Island, killing four people.

Park's promise to deliver a non-proportional response to future provocations from the North is a departure from past practice and could result in war because the North's reaction is impossible to predict, Klingner said.

"If you respond, you are unsure how your opponent will respond," he said. "Will he call it even or will he then raise the stakes?"