North Korea nuclear test

South Korea’s media has called on Seoul to consider developing an independent nuclear deterrent, as concern grows over the strength of Washington’s commitment to its east Asian ally’s security following North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on Sunday.

The South hosts 28,500 US troops and falls under the US nuclear umbrella, but in return is banned from building its own nuclear weapons under a 1974 agreement with the US.
North Korean missile launches and yesterday’s test of what it claimed was a powerful hydrogen bomb have triggered calls by conservative politicians for the South to develop a nuclear deterrent independent of the US. Support for the move is also rising among South Korean voters.

“As nuclear weapons are being churned out above our heads, we can’t always rely on the US nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence,” the mass-circulation Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial on Monday.

The US stationed atomic weapons in the South after the 1950-53 Korean War, but withdrew them in 1991 when North and South Korea jointly declared they would make the peninsula nuclear-free.

The editorial said that agreement no longer applied. “There is no reason for us to cling onto the declaration when it has come to mean the denuclearisation of South Korea, not the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” it said.