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S. Korea has ability to build nuke weapons quickly: defense report
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, March 17 (Yonhap) -- A U.S. defense report has described South Korea and Japan as having the technology to build nuclear weapons quickly if they decide to do so.
"Several friends or Allies of the United States, such as Japan and South Korea, are highly advanced technological states and could quickly build nuclear devices if they chose to do so," said the Joint Operating Environment (JOE) 2010, released on Feb. 18 by the U.S. Joint Forces Command to forecast possible threats and opportunities for the U.S. military.
The report also said North Korea is "pursuing nuclear weapons technology and the means to deliver them as well."
The description is a step back from its previous edition, released on Nov. 25, 2008, which categorized North Korea as a nuclear power, saying, "The rim of the great Asian continent is already home to five nuclear powers: China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia."
The latest edition also noted that "North Korea has on two occasions attempted to test nuclear devices and likely has produced the fissile material required to create weapons."
Pyongyang detonated its second nuclear test in May last year, after one in 2006, inviting stronger U.N. sanctions that led to the North's boycott of the six-party talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs.
North Korea recently called for the removal of sanctions and for a peace treaty as preconditions to its return to the multilateral nuclear talks.
Washington does not acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear weapons state and insists that the North come back to the talks first before discussing a peace treaty, normalization of ties, economic aid and other issues as well as its denuclearization. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice.
"North Korea is likely to attempt to weaponize its nascent nuclear capability to increase its leverage with its neighbors and the United States," the report said.
The report's description of South Korea is similar to its 2008 edition, which categorized South Korea, Taiwan and Japan as three "threshold nuclear states" that "have the capability to develop nuclear weapons quickly, should their political leaders decide to do so."
The report's assessment of South Korea's nuclear capability comes at a sensitive time as Seoul and Washington are negotiating a possible extension of a 1974 agreement that calls for South Korea to obtain U.S. consent before reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
The agreement expires in 2014 and the sides are negotiating a new accord, which South Korea hopes will guarantee its right to reprocess spent fuel rods.
South Korea, which won a US$20 billion contract in December to build four reactors for the United Arab Emirates, has long complained that the constraint on reprocessing has blocked its aspirations.
Complicating the situation are the agreements the U.S. maintains with India, Japan and the European Union for the provision of technological assistance for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
At issue is whether the Obama administration considers pyroprocessing as reprocessing.
South Korea maintains that pyroprocessing, which is less conducive to proliferation, differs from reprocessing by leaving the separated plutonium mixed with other elements. But nonproliferation advocates say little difference exists between the two.
Washington fears South Korea's reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel might undermine global nonproliferation efforts, and provoke the North, and then Japan, making the security situation in Northeast Asia more volatile.
South Korea has its own history of nuclear weapons development.
The late President Park Chung-hee sought a clandestine project for the development of nuclear weapons in the 1970s to cope with military threats from the North after the Lyndon Johnston administration, and later the Jimmy Carter administration, took steps to reduce U.S. troops in Korea.
Park's ambitions were thwarted by the U.S., which successfully pressured France and Canada to refrain from helping South Korea build nuclear reactors capable of producing weapons-grade uranium.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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