THE ECONOMIST

APLN member Lee Sang-Hyun quoted in The Economist, where he commented on the debate over South Korea’s nuclear option. He emphasised that the Korean Peninsula will inevitably become a much more dangerous place if South Korea goes nuclear.

South Korea currently practises a form of hedging. Under Park’s military dictatorship, it tried hiding. It could attempt that again. But it would be much harder in today’s wired, raucous democracy. “There are too many eyes watching now,” says Lee Sang-hyun of the Sejong Institute, a think-tank in Seoul. “If South Korea goes nuclear it would be public, with lots of noise.” It would, in short, make a run for it, either with or without America’s protection. Many experts and diplomats reckon that South Korea could race to build its first nuclear weapon in as little as one year.

Would nuclear weapons really make South Korea safer? Advocates argue that South Korea needs them to counter the North: though it has stronger conventional forces, only the special terror of nuclear weapons can create the psychological effect necessary to deter. Besides, if both sides have the weapons, it may prove easier to negotiate mutual disarmament.

Detractors counter that the peninsula will inevitably become a much more dangerous place if South Korea goes nuclear. “What kind of peace is it if both have nukes?” argues Mr Lee. Rather than enabling disarmament, “there will be an arms race”. Untested leaders on both sides of the border will have their fingers on the nuclear trigger. The finale of this drama could see them stumbling into Armageddon.

The full article can be accessed here.

Image: Flickr