Mitch Shin

“Two-thirds of South Korea’s strategic elites do not favor nuclearization of South Korea,” Victor Cha, a senior vice president for Asia and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said in his latest report published by CSIS in April.

The report came out after South Korean domestic polls showed that the majority of South Koreans support the idea of the country developing its own nuclear weapons as a means to deter North Korea’s preemptive nuclear strikes. Possibly, it could be what Washington elites have wanted to see due to the South Korean public’s growing support for the idea, which Washington has opposed for decades since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Since North Korea demonstrated its capabilities to develop advanced nuclear weapons and to conduct nuclear tests, voices consistently boiled over toward the South Korean government to develop its own nuclear weapons. Especially, in the wake of the collapse of U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks and inter-Korean dialogues, South Koreans support the idea of the country having........

© The Korea Times