hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea walks with President Joe Biden of the US along a corridor of the White House ahead of their summit on April 26. (Yonhap)

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and US President Joe Biden officially announced the Washington Declaration, aimed at strengthening extended deterrence, after their summit on Wednesday.

The declaration reiterated Yoon’s commitment to fulfilling South Korea’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is said to have put the brakes on domestic calls for independent nuclear armament.

The Washington Declaration includes the establishment of a new Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), plans for South Korean conventional support to US nuclear operations in a contingency, and improved combined exercises and training activities on the application of nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula.

The document is seen as the US partially accepting South Korean requests to strengthen the current level of US extended deterrence on the peninsula.

The declaration included the following phrase regarding nonproliferation: “President Yoon reaffirmed the ROK’s longstanding commitment to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as the cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime as well as to the U.S.-ROK Agreement for Cooperation Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy.”

Biden also emphasized the principle of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at the press conference held after the summit, stating that the US will not be stationing nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

According to experts, the summit clearly revealed the US view that the pursuit of nuclear armament by South Korea would be unacceptable. Calls for independent nuclear armament in the country by the ruling party and conservative forces have mainly arisen whenever tensions with the North are flaring up.

President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea walks with President Joe Biden of the US along a corridor of the White House ahead of their summit on April 26. (Yonhap)

Ruling party officials have continued such calls even in recent months. Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, for example, said in an interview with Reuters on March 13 that Korea has “come to a point where it is difficult to convince people with the logic that we should refrain from developing nuclear weapons and stick to the cause of denuclearization.”

Similarly, Thae Yong-ho, a member of the People Power Party’s Supreme Council, told KBS in a radio interview on March 29 that South Korea having its own nuclear weapons would be “of great benefit to the security of the US.”

Kim Jong-dae, a visiting professor at the Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies and former Justice Party lawmaker, said that “the era of managing threats with nuclear weapons at the forefront is over and the US has reaffirmed that the ultimate goal is a world without nuclear weapons.”

Kim Joon-hyung, former chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, explained that the US used this opportunity to make sure South Korea had no further reason to keep bringing up the topic of nuclear sharing.

By Shin Hyeong-cheol, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]