The agreement between the United States and South Korea to strengthen U.S. extended deterrence does not constitute a “de facto nuclear sharing” between the two allies, a White House official said.
“I don’t think that we see this as a de facto nuclear sharing,” Edgard Kagan, special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asia and Oceania of the National Security Council, said Thursday.
Kagan was commenting on remarks made by Kim Tae-hyo, South Korea’s deputy national security adviser, that the accord would make South Koreans “feel that they are sharing nuclear weapons with the United States.”
The two allies pledged to form a new Nuclear Consultative Group to “strengthen extended deterrence, discuss nuclear and strategic planning, and manage the threat to the nonproliferation regime” posed by North Korea.
However, Kagan rejected the idea that the declaration amounted to nuclear sharing akin to that of the United States and NATO members and emphasized that the term nuclear sharing carries “significant implications.”
“I think we’ve also made clear that we are working as partners, that this is an area where, obviously, there are significant differences between the United States and the ROK, in terms of the U.S. being a nuclear state under the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty],” he said.
“But we believe that there’s tremendous room to do more together, and we look forward to doing that,” the U.S. official added.
South Korea, which abandoned its nuclear weapons development program in the 1960s, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1975.
Biden Warns North Korea Against Nuclear Attack
Speaking at a joint press conference on April 26, Biden said the United States would deploy nuclear-capable systems to the Korean Peninsula but would not be stationing nuclear weapons.“We’re not going to be stationing nuclear weapons on the [Korean] Peninsula, but we will have port visits of nuclear submarines and things like that,” he said.
Biden warned that any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies is “unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime.”