Trump win fuels campaign for nuclear arms in South Korea

A missile emerges in a plume of white smoke from blue ocean waters

Nov. 8, 2024 2 AM PT

SEOUL — Hours after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, a South Korean political analyst named Cheong Seong-chang sent an email to his 1,400 subscribers noting what he considered a silver lining in the news that had unsettled so many of America’s allies.

“The reelection of Trump is an opportunity for South Korea to create its own nuclear weapons,” he wrote.

Cheong and others in his camp argue that it is foolish for South Korea and its allies in the region to rely on the United States for their protection, an arrangement forged after the end of the Korean War in 1953 that granted the U.S. operational control of South Korea’s military.

South Korea briefly operated a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s before shutting it down and signing the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in return for “extended nuclear deterrence” from the U.S. — the promise that Washington would use its own nuclear arsenal to protect South Korea from such an attack.

The push to revive it gained traction during Trump’s first term with his oft-repeated complaints that America’s allies weren’t pulling their weight.

In 2020, Trump ordered the withdrawal of around 12,000 U.S. troops stationed in Germany, calling the European nation “delinquent.”

“Germany’s not paying for it,” he said at the time. “We don’t want to be the suckers anymore.”

Trump has similarly dismissed the U.S.-South Korea alliance as an unnecessary drag, suggesting during his first presidential campaign that he might encourage Seoul to build its own nuclear arsenal — a departure from Washington’s long-standing stance of nonproliferation.

As president, he canceled joint military exercises between the two countries for being “tremendously expensive” and told aides that he wanted a “complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea,” according to a 2022 memoir by his former secretary of Defense, Mark Esper.

In an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago in October, Trump called South Korea a “money machine“ that isn’t paying enough for the upkeep of U.S. troops stationed within its borders.

The U.S. has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, which has covered 40% to 50% of the total costs, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, and Seoul contributes around $1 billion annually. Trump has claimed he would get South Korea to pay $10 billion.

His victory in this week’s election is already raising doubts about the U.S. commitment to its allies in the region.

“Mistrust of the U.S. is growing,” said Cheong, who founded the ROK Forum for Nuclear Strategy, a group of 50 analysts, former military officials and academics who share his view that South Korea should acquire nuclear arms.

Also driving their campaign is fear of North Korea, which has defied the international community to develop its own nuclear weapons. With longtime ally China treating its nuclear ambitions with a measure of leeriness, North Korea has recently been strengthening ties with Russia, where it recently sent troops to join the fight against Ukraine.

In a survey by the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded think tank, 66% of South Koreans said their country should get nuclear weapons if North Korea does not disarm.

Among South Korea’s “strategic elites” — the academics, legislators and government officials with the most direct influence over national policy — a survey conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in April found that just over a third support nuclear armament.

But more than half the opponents said they might change their minds if the U.S. were to withdraw its troops or jack up the price of U.S. protection, as Trump has threatened.

Few doubt that South Korea, which has an advanced civil nuclear industry, would be able to develop nuclear weapons.

But many experts say it would not be easy or quick.

“Building the infrastructure and capacity to produce its own fissile material will take several years at best, as well as the time it will take to design, test and manufacture the weapons and compatible delivery systems,” said Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington.

“Major political battles with the public are also likely when it comes to siting, testing or storing such materials, much less manufacturing and storage of warheads to form an actual arsenal.”

More significantly, nuclear armament would first require South Korea to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — a move that Town said would probably result in international sanctions.

Perhaps more significantly, it would anger China and possibly lead to a regional arms race.

But Cheong argues that the idea is not so far-fetched in today’s unpredictable world order.

“So much has changed since the Ukraine war, with the nonproliferation regime once managed between China, Russia and the U.S. having been considerably weakened,” he said.

“Who will tell South Korea that it can’t have nuclear weapons for its own survival?”