[Song Jong-hwan] How to deal with Pyongyang's nuclear threat

Korea Herald

05-02-2025

When US President Donald Trump took office as the 47th president on Jan. 20, he declared he would 'make America great again," and started executing his 'America First' priorities. He also mentioned North Korea as nuclear power on the same day. In an interview with Fox News three days later, he said he would talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. However, North Korea said it would continue to strengthen its nuclear response stance on Jan. 29.
The current South Korean government has announced that it will work closely with the new US government to denuclearize North Korea, but some scholars speculate that Trump may seek 'small deal' negotiations in which the US demands that North Korea reduce its nuclear weapons in return for lifting sanctions.
There is an interpretation that Trump is trying to remove North Korea's nuclear weapons through dialogue without fighting, according to his "The Art of the Deal," published in 2015.
North Korea has stated that it will use nuclear weapons if war breaks out and that it continues to strengthen its nuclear attack capabilities. North Korea said that its denuclearization might be possible only after the US withdraws its forces out of South Korea.
South Korea must establish a balance of terror to prevent North Korea from even being tempted to provoke war with weapons of mass destruction. The theory of balance of terror was created in 1973 by Hans Morgenthau, a professor at the University of Chicago until he passed away in 1980. He warned that 'if a threatened nation has no nuclear means of retaliation, it will either suffer complete destruction or surrender unconditionally as did Japan in 1945 after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed by nuclear bombs."
I argue South Korea should change its defense paradigm from relying on conventional weapons to a nuclear armaments-focused one to establish a balance of terror. At the same time, seamless cooperation between South Korea and the US is required. This is to ensure that extended deterrence, facilitated by US nuclear capabilities, can be promptly and tangibly realized.
On Jan. 11, 2024, Robert Carlin, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and Siegfried Hecker, a professor at Stanford, raised the question about whether the end of total destruction resulting from the application of extended deterrence would justify the means.
Recently, Elbridge Colby, Trump's nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy, expressed skepticism about whether the US can continue to keep its promises for extended deterrence.
Trump held a public video call with US soldiers stationed at Camp Humphreys, a US military base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, on Jan. 20. Camp Humphreys is the largest and newest US army base overseas.
I do not believe North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons. The competition for hegemony between the US and China is intensifying, and I believe the US' policy of extended deterrence against North Korea's nuclear armament is not effective.
With these reasons, several nuclear options have been raised in the US and South Korea: nuclear armament under US understanding; redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons; the plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment allowed to Japan when the US-Japan Atomic Energy Agreement was extended on July 16, 2018; and construction of nuclear-powered submarines given to Australia in on Sept. 15, 2021 when AUKUS (Australia-United Kingdom-United States) started.
First, applying strong pressure rather than offering a "small deal," if one or more of the nuclear options mentioned above is eventually realized, could, I believe, effectively encourage dialogue for the denuclearization of North Korea. Second, South Korea could exert pressure on China to play an active role in achieving the denuclearization of the North. Third, if both Koreas possess nuclear weapons, I argue that situation could contribute to a situation like that between China and India, or between India and Pakistan. Fourth, Seoul could serve as a deterrent, preventing Pyongyang from threatening the US mainland and US military bases in Japan. Fifth, in the era of US-China power competition, a nuclear-armed South Korea could, I argue, serve as a countermeasure to restrain China, in the event that China attacks US forces stationed here to gain control over the Pacific region. Finally, a nuclear-armed South Korea could be considered more cost-effective and less damaging to the US than the US itself conducting a military operation in response to North Korea.
As the ROK-US Combined Forces Command's motto, 'Let's Go Together,' suggests, the governments and people of the US and South Korea should join forces to move quickly to deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons.