As North Korea escalates tensions on the Korean Peninsula, a new debate has ignited in Seoul over whether South Korea should have the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — a step that would allow for the extraction of a fissile material that can be used to build nuclear weapons.
According to the South Korean Embassy in Washington, Ambassador to the U.S. Cho Hyun-dong said last Friday that his government will work with the new U.S. administration that will be inaugurated in January to strengthen nuclear cooperation, including a discussion of the need for nuclear reprocessing in South Korea.
Cho was responding to a question posed by one of a group of Korean lawmakers who were visiting the embassy for an annual parliamentary audit.
The debate comes as North Korea ramps up its nuclear weapons programs and saber-rattling rhetoric.
On Thursday, North Korea's state media said Pyongyang has "clearly defined South Korea as a hostile country" through a revision of the constitution during a parliamentary meeting last week. Two days earlier, the North blew up the northern section of roads that once linked it with South Korea.
Going nuclear
South Korea faces growing internal calls to develop its own nuclear weapons. Some South Koreans argue that their country should at least have the nuclear reprocessing right — just as Japan, another key U.S. ally in the Indo-Pacific region does — so South Korea could be ready to build nuclear arms as soon as it decides to do so.
Nuclear reprocessing refers to the separation of spent nuclear reactor fuel into potentially reusable nuclear materials and other nuclear waste. The process helps managing radioactive waste more sustainably while extracting plutonium that can be used for nuclear weapons.
Under the U.S.-South Korean Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation, signed in 2015 to replace a prior nuclear pact, South Korea's nuclear reprocessing is subject to further negotiation with the U.S.
On the other hand, Japan has the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel at its facilities under the U.S.-Japan nuclear cooperation agreement.
In a response to a VOA inquiry, the South Korean Foreign Ministry stressed that Cho's remark reflected the need to come up with measures to manage high-level radioactive waste, including spent nuclear fuel.
"The South Korean government continues to seek ways to manage high-level radioactive waste such as spent nuclear fuel," a spokesperson for the South Korean Foreign Ministry told VOA's Korean Service via email on Wednesday.
The spokesperson said securing the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel is "an issue that should be carefully resolved by comprehensively taking into account various factors such as sensitivity, in terms of nuclear nonproliferation and economic feasibility."
"The current South Korea-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement took effect in 2015 and is valid until 2035, and we intend to continue to upgrade peaceful nuclear cooperation between South Korea and the U.S. while faithfully implementing the agreement," the spokesperson added.
The U.S. stressed that it has a long-standing policy to limit the spread of enrichment and reprocessing capabilities around the world.
"The U.S. strives to promote civil nuclear cooperation globally to advance our principles for the highest standards of safety, security, and non-proliferation," a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed response on Thursday to a VOA Korean inquiry.
"The ROK and the United States have maintained a mutually beneficial relationship through nuclear cooperation for decades, including our two countries having maintained close cooperation to fulfill our duties in the global community to ensure the highest levels of safety, non-proliferation and security for the peaceful use of nuclear energy," the spokesperson said. ROK stands for Republic of Korea, the country's formal name.
Proliferation concerns
U.S. experts say it is highly unlikely that Washington will give consent for Seoul to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, as that would pose a greater challenge to the nonproliferation regime.
"I understand that South Koreans may perceive that it isn't fair that the U.S. supported Japan's reprocessing but not South Korea's reprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel," Toby Dalton, co‑director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an email Wednesday to VOA Korean.
"However, it is important to understand that the U.S. agreed to Japanese reprocessing in the 1970s, at a time when the U.S. had a policy more favorable to reprocessing."
Dalton said the current U.S. policy "does not support reprocessing anywhere, largely because of the proliferation risk."
"So, in the U.S. view, this is less an issue of fairness than of timing — Japan made a request before the U.S. policy change," Dalton said. "South Korea's interest in reprocessing came much later."
Robert Einhorn, a former special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control at the State Department who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA Korean via email Wednesday, "Some South Koreans are now advocating indigenous reprocessing and uranium enrichment programs, not primarily for civil nuclear energy reasons, but to provide an option to produce the fissile material needed for nuclear weapons.
"It is understandable that the ROK seeks to strengthen deterrence against the growing North Korean nuclear threat, but Seoul and Washington are already pursuing the most effective way of countering that threat — strengthening the U.S.-ROK alliance and reinforcing the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent, including by giving South Koreans a much more important role in the planning and execution of that deterrent," Einhorn said.
Joseph DeTrani, who served as the special envoy for six-party denuclearization talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006, told VOA Korean via email Wednesday that reprocessing nuclear waste would bring South Korea a step closer to being able to pursue its own nuclear weapons capability.
That would be "something the U.S. opposes, given the likelihood of a nuclear arms race in the region if South Korea has nuclear weapons," he said.
"Occasional hints by ROK officials of South Korea's interest in developing nuclear weapons and the advocacy by some ROK National Assembly members for the ROK to develop a latent nuclear weapons capability are probably unnerving U.S. policymakers and will likely stiffen their opposition to allowing reprocessing by the ROK," said Evans Revere, who served as acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, in an email Wednesday to VOA Korean.
