RUSI Newsbrief, 3 Sep 2013 By Amelie SundbergThe US-South Korean bilateral nuclear-energy agreement have been a source of continuing, if forcibly repressed, tension within the two countries’ very public alliance. The present agreement – signed in 1972 under Section 123 of the 1954 US Atomic Energy Act and revised in 1974 – stipulates that South Korea must import US nuclear material and technology under effective safeguards, and requires prior US consent for reprocessing or enrichment activities regarding the agreement. Now South Korea, under President Park Geun-hye, hopes to renegotiate this arrangement in favour of a ‘blank cheque’ granting permission for South Korea to have interaction in civil uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent fuel.

This is a crucial issue for Seoul, provided that uranium enrichment would expand its nuclear exports in keeping with its growing status on earth nuclear market, and reprocessing would help to administer a looming crisis of nuclear-waste storage. Indeed, rhetoric surrounding its nuclear ambitions is increasingly couched in nationalist terms, reflecting perceptions that this can be a matter of national sovereignty.

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Posted in Security Systems