Seoul – A revelation, which the US Energy Ministry referred to as a “sensitive country” – a label that is reserved for nations that are presented as a threat to national security or the non -spreading of nuclear people have beaten South Korean officials according to answers.
Foreign Minister Cho Tae-Yul, who was interviewed by the legislator on March 11 during a parliamentary meeting on March 11, said that the South Korean government was not aware of the measure and only found out through “unofficial channels” after the local media had broken the news the day before.
The sensitive country list is cultivated by the Department of Energy Coupintelligence Unit and includes nuclear states such as India and Russia as well as countries that are viewed as sponsors of terrorism such as North Korea or Iran.
South Korea's supplement to the list that the Energy Ministry has announced this month the research institutions within the framework of its edition will be completed by April 15, reported the Hankyoreh newspaper in South Korea.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, center right, and his wife Kim Keon-Hee wave the national flags.
(Ahn Young-Joon / Associated Press)
In a statement by the Times on Saturday, a spokesman for the Ministry of Energy confirmed that the outgoing bidding administration had been carried out in January did not explain why.
“Inclusion does not necessarily point to a controversial relationship with the United States. Many designated countries are those with which we regularly work with a variety of energy, science, technology, terrorism and non-distribution issues,” said the spokesman and added that South Korea was called “other named country”-the “Lowest” category of the list.
“Inclusion in the SCL also prohibits the Americans or the US Energy Ministry (DOE) from visiting or making business with listed countries, nor does it not prevent this foreign national DOE locations,” said the spokesman. “The name does not prohibit scientific or technical cooperation. These visits and cooperation are previously subjected to an internal review.”
On Monday, Cho informed the local reporters that officials believed that the move in a “security problem” was triggered in a Department of Energy Research Labor. In an examination report on October 2023 to March 2024 presented to the Congress, the Ministry of Energy announced that he had released a contractor because he had tried to increase an airplane with a “Proprietary nuclear reactor -software” to South Korea.
Nevertheless, the unannounced step of the US government of putting a large, non-nuclear ally in the same company as countries as China or North Korea, the politicians unsettled, and many interpreted them as a blow to the US south Korea alliance.
“In the 70 years of the US south Korea alliance, there is something unprecedented,” said Kim Sung-Hoi, spokesman for the Democratic Party.
Non -distribution experts have attributed the decision to the US caution of the growing choir in South Korea for his own nuclear armament.
Although South Korea has signed a signatories from the nuclear distribution agreement since the 1970s, this term has gained significant increase since President Trump's first term when Trump had exhausted that the United States could withdraw troops from South Korea, which he has accused of not paying enough for their maintenance.
“Why should we defend someone? And we talk about a very rich country. But they are a very rich country and why didn't they want to pay?” Trump said in an interview with Time Magazine last year.
Since the United States was no longer regarded as a reliable provider of military support, high-ranking civil servants have openly thought about the possibility that South Korea has developed its own nuclear skills, including conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol -der is currently exposed to his explanation of the combat right-and-soul mayor OH SE-HOON.
“There can be a time when we can no longer rely on the United States for our security,” said former Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan in a newspaper column this month, shortly after the Trump government had exposed military help to Ukraine. “And to prepare us for such a scenario, we have to strengthen our own military strength, including potential nuclear skills, so that we can contain North Korea ourselves.”
Despite South Korea's formal obligations towards non -distribution, these comments are likely to be interpreted by US officials much more seriously than South Korean civil servants, said Tom Countryman, a former deputy foreign minister for international security and non -distribution.
The South Korean Army, which even takes positions near the border with North Korea, when he was a hypocrite in Paju. During President Trump's first term, he indicated that the United States could withdraw troops from South Korea, which he accused of not paying enough for their maintenance.
(Ahn Young-Joon / Associated Press)
“It is unusual, but at the same time there is no other country in the world that has no nuclear weapons in which the public debate about getting nuclear weapons is as loud as it is currently in the Republic of Korea,” he said about the sensitive country list.
Countryman, who led the negotiations with South Korea in 2015 about the revised agreement -a pact that the US government is asking for countries who are looking for technical cooperation and support in civil nuclear energy, stated that US officials are aware that South Korea once carried out a hidden nuclear weapon program in the 1970s, and that the following regions that were operated on US -American, in the US, dealt with in the United States to move the US insurance in order to take the US way to fulfill the US creation. Spring stamp to build nuclear weapons.
“It's still a relevant story today,” he said.
South Korea is partly due to significant technological support from the United States and has one of the most demanding civilian nuclear programs in the world. 26 reactors offer about 30% of the country's electricity.
The South Korean officials have the difficulty of storing the fuel in the South Korean small land mass in the South Korean small agricultural fair, for a long time for the right to resume its own fuel such as Japan, a decision that the 123 agreement was postponed in 2015.
However, the most recent name in South Korea can mean that the door to this goal is closed.
“I believe that all the loose political conversation about nuclear weapons makes it less likely that the United States would give such permission,” said Countryman.
In South Korea, many fear that the name will reduce technological cooperation with the USA, including nuclear energy as well as in artificial intelligence and quantum computer.
“It will relax the research atmosphere, especially with stricter screening for South Korean researchers who are trying to visit the USA or take part in projects that the Energy Ministry sees as sensitive or risky,” said Moon Joo-Hyun, a nuclear scientist at Dankook University.
Among the research areas concerned can be small modular reactors that the governments referred to as cheaper and safer alternative to traditional nuclear reactors, and the concerns that they represent a higher risk of proliferation.
Nuclear experts like Moon say, South Korea, one of the few countries in the world in which nuclear reactors are exported, may have to talk to the Department of Energy Controls, since the flagship export reactor South Korea was built due to a US design.
According to a contract for $ 20 billion in 2009, to provide the United Arab Emirates four reactors, South Korea has been interested in exporting its reactors to Saudi Arabia, which has refused to sign a 123 agreement with the USA, unless his own uranium enriching a further way to produce atomic bombing.
Last year, after the Czech Republic, the South Korean Korean Hydro & Nuclear Power has appointed the preferred bidder to be a major nuclear power project, the US nuclear power plant Westinghouse submitted a lawsuit against Korea Hydro an agreement this year.
“There were many aspects of the Czech offer that seemed to make the United States uncomfortable, and I actually think that this fear of the growing proportion of South Korea in the global nuclear energy market could also have played when deciding to list South Korea,” said Hwang Ji-Hwan, an expert in non-connections at the University of Seoul.
“There are still areas in which South Korea needs the cooperation of their US colleagues like patents during these export business. They could score a hit,” said Hwang.