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This week, South Korea’s president said it was increasingly difficult to convince his country the U.S. would protect it with nuclear weapons as the U.S. has promised for seven decades. President Yoon’s comments come at a time of increasing tension on the Korean Peninsula and an ongoing arms race. Nick Schifrin reports.
Amna Nawaz:
This week, South Korea’s president said it was increasingly difficult to convince his country the U.S. would protect it with nuclear weapons, as the U.S. has promised for seven decades.
President Yoon’s comments come at a time of increasing tension on the Korean Peninsula and an ongoing arms race.
Nick Schifrin examines South Korean calls for the U.S. to do more to protect Seoul, as North Korea launches an unprecedented number of missiles and vows an exponential growth of its nuclear capability.
Nick Schifrin:
At the stroke of midnight, North Koreans ushered in 2023 by launching a massive show of pyrotechnics.
And they celebrated leader Kim Jong-un, who spent 2022 launching his own fireworks. In propaganda videos, North Korea recently displayed what it calls the world’s largest mobile intercontinental ballistic missile. For Kim, 2022 was a year of swagger in the face of sanctions, as announced by Korean state TV, more missile tests than any time in history, missiles designed to be more difficult to intercept and detect, to better threaten South Korea and Japan, and to be multigenerational.
That’s Kim’s daughter and a missile designed to hit the East Coast of the United States. And Kim has taken steps to lower the threshold for nuclear use. And after South Korean threats, he specified when he might launch preemptive strikes. South Korea and the U.S. have responded with military shows of force. And the U.S. has reiterated its vow to protect South Korea with U.S. nuclear weapons known as the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
But South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol suggests he wants more.
Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korean President (through translator):
We must send a clear message to people who frequently carry out provocations. We must never fear them or hesitate.
Nick Schifrin:
In a newspaper interview this week, Yoon said — quote — “It is difficult to convince our people with just the idea of a U.S. nuclear umbrella.”
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks (RET.), U.S. Army: Well, I think it’s very significant. It’s also reflective of the nature of this alliance, that it can continue to grow over time.
Nick Schifrin:
Retired General Vincent Brooks was the U.S. commander in South Korea from 2016 to 2018 and is now the chairman of the Korea Defense Veterans Association.
Brooks says North Korea’s tests and rhetoric have accelerated historic South Korean concerns about the U.S. commitment to deterring North Korea.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:
All of this causes the South Korea body politic to go, hey, are we really sure we have got the right protection here, or should we just go about it ourselves?
Nick Schifrin:
Has the U.S. provided enough reassurance, in your opinion to South Korea, given all of the moves that North Korea is making?
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:
Well, apparently not.
Certainly, there have been a lot of demonstrations to make it very clear to the South Korean political leadership and to the body politic that the United States is present.
Bruce Klingner, Former CIA Intelligence Analyst:
There’s always concern by South Korea as to whether we will actually live up to our agreements, and that has grown during the last five years, once they demonstrated ICBM capability in 2017. We often hear that will we trade San Francisco for Seoul?
Nick Schifrin:
Bruce Klingner is the senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea.
He says the concern is born not only from North Korean threats.
Donald Trump, Former President of the United States: At some point into the future, I would like to save the money.
Nick Schifrin:
At one point, former President Trump hinted he would remove U.S. troops from South Korea if Seoul didn’t contribute enough to their costs.
Donald Trump:
Thank you very much.
Bruce Klingner:
So there’s that concern that President Trump or perhaps another candidate like President Trump might carry through on that threat, or even it’s just raising more doubts in South Korean minds, no matter how often U.S. officials tried to allay those concerns.
Nick Schifrin:
U.S. officials repeatedly reiterate their commitment to South Korea.
Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense: Our extended deterrence commitment is firm and includes a full range of our nuclear and conventional and missile defense capabilities.
Nick Schifrin:
And this year’s National Defense Strategy warns: “There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive.”
When Brooks was commander, he says he faced the same South Korean skepticism and took steps to reassure South Korea of U.S. nuclear capacity.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:
We did some visitations to make it possible for members of the Korean National Assembly, the chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff to actually see the assets and to learn more about how they’re positioned and why they’re always in range.
Nick Schifrin:
Do you think your efforts to reassure the South Koreans when you were there worked? And do you think that can be a model to reassure them again?
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:
Yes and yes. It did reassure. That has a time limit to it. It expires with people coming in and out of office. All those that we carried to see the systems have since left office. And so now there’s a new wave of leaders who need similar assurances.
Nick Schifrin:
And those leaders are now asking for more nuclear assurances.
This week, South Korea’s presidential office said Seoul and Washington “are discussing joint execution plans over the management of U.S. nuclear weapons.”
The problem with that, the U.S. does not hand over execution of its nuclear weapons to any ally, and it doesn’t jointly plan for the possible use of nuclear weapons with South Korea.
Brooks says that should change.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:
I do believe that it’s time for this alliance to have binational planning for the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Nick Schifrin:
And, right now, that military planning does not exist?
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks:
That’s correct.
Nick Schifrin:
U.S. officials say they’re looking to expand coordination with South Korea and how to best deter North Korea that seems determined to accelerate its missile and nuclear capacity.
For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Nick Schifrin.
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Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin
Nick Schifrin is the foreign affairs and defense correspondent for PBS NewsHour, based in Washington, D.C. He leads NewsHour’s foreign reporting and has created week-long, in-depth series for NewsHour from China, Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Cuba, Mexico, and the Baltics. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2018 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In November 2020, Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs.
Zeba Warsi Zeba Warsi
Zeba Warsi is Foreign affairs producer, based in Washington DC. She’s a Columbia Journalism School graduate with an M.A. in Political journalism. Prior to the NewsHour, she was based in New Delhi for seven years, covering politics, extremism, sexual violence, social movements and human rights as a special correspondent with CNN’s India affiliate CNN-News18.
Dan Sagalyn Dan Sagalyn
As the deputy senior producer for foreign affairs and defense at the PBS NewsHour, Dan plays a key role in helping oversee and produce the program’s foreign affairs and defense stories. His pieces have broken new ground on an array of military issues, exposing debates simmering outside the public eye.
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