Trump says South Korea has approval to build nuclear-powered submarine
Trump wrote on social media that the submarine will be built in the Philadelphia shipyard, where South Korean companies have increased their investments.
The US president, who met with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and other regional leaders during his visit, also said Seoul had agreed to purchase large amounts of US oil and gas.
Trump and Lee finalized details of a worrisome trade deal at a summit in South Korea on Wednesday.
Lee also wanted US permission for South Korea to reprocess nuclear fuel.
ARE NUCLEAR LIMITATIONS IMPROVING? Under an agreement between the countries, Seoul is prohibited from repurposing without U.S. permission. “I have given them the green light to build Nuclear Powered Submarines instead of the outdated and much less agile diesel powered Submarines they currently have,” Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform on Thursday.
South Korea’s Ministry of Industry said its officials were not involved in any detailed discussions regarding the construction of the submarines in Philadelphia.
Although South Korea has a developed shipbuilding industry, Trump did not say where the propulsion technology for the nuclear-powered submarine, which only a few countries currently have, would come from.
The United States, along with Australia and the United Kingdom, is working on a project for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines that involves technology transfer from the United States. The US has ever shared this technology with Britain only in the 1950s.
When Lee met with Trump on Wednesday, he said allowing South Korea to build several nuclear-powered submarines armed with conventional weapons would significantly reduce the burden on the U.S. military.
He also sought Trump’s support to allow South Korea to reprocess spent nuclear fuel or make significant progress on enriching uranium, something that is not currently allowed under the nuclear deal between the two countries, even though it has nuclear reactors to produce energy.
IT RAISES QUESTIONS OF CONFIRMATION
Lee’s predecessors wanted to build nuclear-powered submarines, but the United States had opposed the idea for decades.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the issue of South Korea purchasing such submarines “raises all kinds of questions.”
“As with the AUKUS agreement, (South Korea) is likely seeking nuclear propulsion services suitable for submarines, including fuel, from the United States,” he said.
Such submarines often involve the use of highly enriched uranium and “will require a very complex new security regime” by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which plays a key role in implementing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Kimball said.
“It remains technically and militarily unnecessary for South Korea to obtain technology to extract weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel or to acquire uranium enrichment capabilities that could also be used to produce nuclear weapons,” he said.
“If the United States is seeking to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide, the Trump administration must as forcefully resist such attempts from its allies as it seeks to deny adversaries access to these dual-use technologies.”
Jenny Town, who heads 38 North, a Korea-focused research group in Washington, said it was inevitable that South Korea would increase its demands for U.S. cooperation on nuclear issues, given recent allegations of Russian technical cooperation to help nuclear-armed North Korea make progress in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
Kim Dong-yup, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University, said the Lee-Trump summit formalized “a transaction scheme of security guarantees and economic contributions” to maintain expanded deterrence and alliance in exchange for South Korea’s increased defense spending and nuclear-powered submarines and U.S. investments.
“In conclusion, this South Korea-US summit can be summed up in one word: commercialization of the alliance and commodification of peace,” he said. “The problem is that the balance of this agreement was to maximize American interests rather than the autonomy of the Korean Peninsula.”
