[EDITORIAL] Nuclear umbrella

"South Korea is protected by the nuclear umbrella of the United States." Koreans have constantly heard this assurance and believed it since the Cold War period. While the East and West were confronting each other, deploying thousands of missiles mounted with nuclear warheads at strategic locations until the 1980s, Koreans did not really care about a nuclear attack; they were more concerned with a conventional attack from the North.

When the North Korean nuclear program surfaced in the early 1990s, South Koreans gave a little more thought to the nuclear umbrella provided by the Korea-U.S. alliance. After two nuclear tests by North Korea in less than three years, accompanied by the test-firing of various types of missiles, South Koreans are at last pondering seriously how they can be protected by nuclear arms in the possession of a foreign country.



Can the "umbrella" work as a perfect shield against an enemy that dares unleash a nuclear attack? They ask the question these days and they find it hard to reach a convincing answer. President Lee Myung-bak will ask the same question to U.S. President Barack Obama when they meet in their first summit in Washington in mid-June. How the U.S. commander-in-chief answers the question will have a grave bearing on the mounting tension in the Korean Peninsula, for both the ally and its adversary.

Technically, the U.S. expression of its readiness to provide nuclear support has changed subtly since North Korea`s first nuclear test in October 2006. A joint communique, issued less than two weeks after the nuclear test - at the close of the 38th annual Korea-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting - reaffirmed the "continuation of the extended deterrence by the U.S. nuclear umbrella."

It was explained that "extemded deterrence" means the same level of retaliation as in the event of a nuclear attack on U.S. territory. Ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and smart bombs are to be used. It also includes destruction of enemy WMD before they reach their target, early warning of an attack, and the clearance of nuclear contamination. Until the previous year, SCM joint communiques had rather ambiguously mentioned "provisions of the nuclear umbrella."

Any reference to the nuclear umbrella by the new U.S. president should be addressed to three different audiences: To South Korea, it should be the strongest possible reassurance of protection; to Japan, a convincing persuasion against developing its own nuclear weapons; and to North Korea, an unmistakable warning of total destruction.

Following the May 25 nuclear test, North Korea shows signs of preparing for the test-firing of an inter-continental ballistic missile from a new launch pad on its west coast. The new Dongchang-ri facility is much closer to Pyongyang, where missile parts are produced, and the Yongbyon nuclear complex than the Musudan-ri launching ground on the east coast. It is within 100 kilometers of China, seemingly making it safer from a U.S. preemptive strike.

Watching the excessive and extraordinary North Korean activities in recent days, a growing number of U.S. analysts are pointing to the inevitability of military action, while hawkish opinions are rising in Japan as well as Korea, calling for the initiation of our own nuclear programs. Such moves only indicate the insufficient effect of reassurance the decades-old U.S. nuclear umbrella has on its allies. Washington officials now have the important task of strengthening convictions about the nuclear umbrella.