A debate is heating up over whether South Korea should pursue nuclear armament after North Korea has fueled security jitters here by conducting a fourth nuclear test last month.

Experts and politicians are sharply divided as they contemplate the potential benefits and perils of the South's nuclearization, which they say is bound to reshape the contours of regional politics and security.

The Seoul government has said that its vision of a nuclear-free peninsula will remain unchanged with the U.S.' security backing, and that it would abide by its obligations under an international non-proliferation regime.

Calls for a nuclear deterrent resurfaced after what Pyongyang claims to be a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. A recent survey, commissioned by Yonhap News Agency and local broadcaster KBS, found more than 50 percent of South Koreans were in favor of their country's nuclear armament.

Proponents have been calling for Seoul to either develop its own nuclear weapons or ask its ally, Washington, to redeploy tactical nuclear arms that were withdrawn from the peninsula shortly before an inter-Korean denuclearization accord took effect in 1992.

"We cannot borrow the (nuclear) umbrella whenever it rains. We, ourselves, should have a sturdy rain coat," Rep. Won Yoo-chul, the floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, said during his parliamentary speech earlier this month.

His remarks followed the repeated argument by former ruling party leader Chung Mong-joon that Seoul should call for the redeployment of tactical U.S. nuclear arms here. "Seoul can no longer deal with a neighboring rogue state armed with a machine gun when it has only a stone to hurl," he has said.

Supporters for nuclearization argue that the South should secure reliable deterrence by creating a "balance of terror" with the North -- a condition under which one dares not initiate nuclear warfare that would lead to mutual annihilation.

Others claim that a nuclear-power status would enable the South to bolster national pride, reduce its security reliance on the U.S., secure a more balanced relationship with the superpower ally and curtail heavy expenditures on its conventional military buildup.

They also say nuclear weapons would serve as a bargaining chip to pressure the North to denuclearize when the communist regime does not regard the non-nuclear South as a legitimate negotiating partner.

"Time has come for Seoul to consider nuclear armament from the standpoint of self-defense rather than relying only on the U.S. nuclear umbrella or U.N. Security Council sanctions," Cheng Seong-chang, senior research fellow at the state think tank Sejong Institute, said in his contributing article to Shindonga, a local magazine.

Arguments in favor of going nuclear reflect growing misgivings about U.S.' security commitment to the South, analyst said. As the financially-strained U.S. employed a "retrenchment" policy of reducing international engagement and expenditures, security concerns here have increased.

"Calls for nuclear arms here send a strong message to the U.S. that the South has doubts about the U.S.' security guarantee in the event of a contingency on the peninsula," said Yang Wuk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defense and Security Forum.

"From the U.S.' reluctance to promptly intervene in the cases of Crimea, Libya and Syria to its ongoing moves to transform the U.S. troops in Korea into an expeditionary force from a hitherto static force wholly responsible for deterring the North, all these have stoked the misgivings."

Those against nuclearization warn of serious military, diplomatic and economic ramifications.

They said the pursuit of nuclear weapons would trigger a regional nuclear arms race and deal a serious blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- only to infuriate the U.S. to the extent that it wants to terminate the alliance treaty with the South.

"The NPT has been a major vehicle for limiting nuclear proliferation. The withdrawal of a major U.S. ally from the NPT would be a major embarrassment for the United States, and cause many other countries to question whether they should also withdraw," Bruce Bennett, senior defense analyst at the U.S.-based Rand Corp., said.

"Therefore, there would be considerable pressure both within the United States and internationally for the country to punish South Korea for this action, in part to discourage other countries from withdrawing from the NPT."

Bennett added that the cancellation of the alliance would mean the withdrawal of U.S. troops and all of their military equipment from the peninsula, which would seriously compromise the South's defense capabilities.

"(The South's nuclearization) could well lead to the termination of the alliance -- the United States withdrawing its forces from South Korea and shedding the infrastructure that allows U.S. forces to flow to Korea if a conflict develops," he said. "In short, if U.S. forces leave, they are unlikely to come back, even if South Korea is invaded by the North."

Balbina Hwang, a political scientist at American University and former U.S. State Department official, said that a decision to go nuclear would make the South as much a "pariah state" as the North. She stressed the decision should be based on serious contemplation and rational considerations, "not hysteria or emotion."

"The decision to become a nuclear weapons state would crucially jeopardize the entire future of the Republic of Korea, and endanger its current status as an acknowledged, respected, and even admired leading member of the global community," she said.

The scholar highlighted the enormous economic ramifications of international sanctions for nuclearization, saying the export-driven South Korean economy would collapse "immediately." Exports contribute about 70 percent of South Korea's annual economic growth.

"Can the ROK economy bear the economic costs of international sanctions and economic isolation? Absolutely not, as the South Korean economy is still highly dependent on its open ties to the international economy," she said.

Some analysts repudiated the claim that the South's possession of nuclear arms would enable the nuclear "balance of terror" with the North. They said such a Cold War-era deterrence strategy would only work based on the premise that a potential adversary would think "rationally" and would not risk a nuclear exchange.

"The balance of terror is a very unstable condition in light of the fact that we can't expect the North to think rationally. North Korea is particularly dangerous given that its unpredictable leader Kim Jong-un calls all the shots," Park Won-gon, security expert at Handong Global University, said.

"On top of this, a war could be precipitated due to miscalculations and misperceptions, which would make it difficult to expect peace from the balance of terror."

Some point to practical concerns such as finding storage facilities for nuclear arsenal, which would likely be placed in the crosshairs of Pyongyang's nuclear forces.

"I have to ask: which South Korean community or communities will volunteer to become the storage locations for South Korean nuclear weapons?" said Bennett of the Rand Corp. "They would do so knowing that they would become nuclear target number one of at least the North Korean nuclear weapons." (Yonhap)