South Korea is at a crossroads in both the peaceful and military uses of nuclear power. The Moon Jae-in government shut down the oldest nuclear power plant in the nation and then announced a halt to two reactor construction projects, envisioning a total phasing out of nuclear energy in a few decades. In the area of military use, the new government says it remains committed to the international nonproliferation regime, but public opinion is turning heavily in favor of going nuclear.

The government last week suspended the construction of the Shin (New) Kori 5 and 6 power plants for three months, pending a review of their justifiability by a “citizens’ jury,” which will exclude economic and industrial stakeholders and technological experts. It was a quite speedy translation of one of Moon’s major campaign pledges into action.

The Kori No. 1 reactor, South Korea’s first, went critical in 1978 and 24 more nuclear reactors have since been built to provide for some 30 percent of total power demand in this country. The new administration, given a five-year mandate with 41 percent support in the May 9 election, is going to scrap the main energy program pursued by successive administrations for more than 30 years -- through a 90-day process of surveys managed by a group of non-experts.

Whatever decision will be made of the two reactor projects, now about 28 percent complete, its impact will be limited to less than 2 percent of total power generation. Yet, pro and con arguments are heating up, carrying left-vs.-right ideological overtones. Then, we have the more serious question of meeting threats from a nuclear-armed enemy by the law of an eye for an eye. Problem is we cannot fathom where our government is taking us to in this issue of life and death.

People are worried about the rise of utility charges in the event nuclear power plants are shut down one after the other. The consequences, on the other hand, of a failure to denuclearize the North will be a possible nuclear holocaust on the Korean Peninsula. Instead of giving the people security assurance, the new government rather helps raise their anxiety with procrastination and ambiguity, even with its veiled reluctance about the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system here.

The growing stress inflicted of late by the spectacles of missile launches in the North drove me to a public seminar on North Korean nuclear threats sponsored by Heonjeong-hoe, a fraternity of former lawmakers. The debate was dominated by arguments in favor of South Korea’s nuclear armament. Applause reverberated when panelists made claims the South is capable of producing atomic bombs in a short time as soon as the green light is given.

Keynote presenters were professor Seo Kyun-ryeol at Seoul National University, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Westinghouse-trained nuclear engineer; Song Dae-seong, former director of the government-funded think tank Sejong Institute; and Kim Min-seok, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, who formerly was spokesman for the Defense Ministry.

Professor Seo, in essence, claimed South Korea could produce a sizable amount of nuclear weapons with more than 25 kilograms of plutonium that could be extracted from spent fuel at the 25 nuclear reactors in the country.

He said, “The Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, KIDA and local nuclear power plants shall cooperate with the Samsung, LG, SK and Hanwha conglomerates as well as with universities if we are to start nuclear armament. Five-hundred billion won to 1 trillion won ($434 million-$868 million) will be enough for the nuclear arms project, which would take six months to two years.”

Song, a retired Air Force major general, suggested options to counter the North’s nuclear threats and eventually to denuclearize it -- diplomatic approaches ranging from dialogue and negotiation to containment and sanctions, as well as radical steps ranging from a pre-emptive strike to covert operations for a regime change. All these options, which the US’ Donald Trump administration says are among its strategic options, can attain the goal when there is perfect collaboration between the two allies, he argued.

His emphasis was, however, on achieving a “balance of terror” with North Korea. To attain that equilibrium, South Korea can seek 1) the reintroduction of the US tactical nuclear weapons, 2) lease of nuclear arms from friendly nuclear states, 3) purchase of nuclear arms from overseas, and 4) Korea’s going nuclear by itself. Seoul should propose to Washington that it bring its tactical nuclear weapons into South Korea or acquiesce to our own nuclear armament, as the second and third options are less likely.

Kim Min-seok admitted to the imperfection of the current three-tier countermeasures against the North’s nuclear threats. The Kill Chain, a concept of pre-emptive strike; the Korean Air and Missile Defense, a terminal low-altitude anti-missile system; and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation, a second-strike method in the event of a nuclear attack from the North, will require several more years and tens of trillions of won to become truly reliable.

Most important is expeditious deployment of THAAD here. The defense theorist then called for massive investments to improve our capabilities to neutralize the North’s multiple-launch rockets, a serious threat in both conventional and nuclear warfare. He particularly urged joint Korea-US operation of the new B61-12 bunker-buster weapon which can destroy the enemy’s underground nuclear facilities.

Kim sees the North gaining a de facto nuclear-power status by the end of the year, at which time South Korea should depart from its 1992 denuclearization obligations. The most realistic step, he concluded, is redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons here as Washington has done for its NATO allies. Then South Korea should announce it is starting its own nuclear armament program.

The atmosphere in the packed auditorium was a mixture of gloom from the recognition of being defeated in the silent war with the North and fervor to turn the table by all means. Blame went to past administrations for having been so ineffective both in deterring the North’s nuclear ambitions and in developing the South’s own capabilities to counter it, but strong distrust was directed at the incumbent.

The Moon government is going to refer the nuclear energy problem to the “citizens’ jury.” The big question now is how the new administration, so inclined to populist approach in making major decisions, will consume the pro-nuclear voices of those experts that are gaining increasingly wide public support.

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By Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. -- Ed.