Looming Clash Between Seoul and Washington Over Nuclear Technology

When South Korean President Park Geun-hye visits Washington on May 5 she will be reaffirming the 60-year alliance between the U.S. and her country with cordiality. Relations between Washington and Seoul are better than ever thanks to a free-trade agreement, greater policy coordination and solidarity against North Korea’s provocations. But there is an unresolved question in their relationship: How much nuclear technology should South Korea possess? Representatives from both countries have tried to answer that question since October 2010, when they started negotiating over the 1974 nuclear-cooperation agreement, which permits commercial nuclear trade between the two nations. Under the pact, South Korea is banned from reprocessing spent U.S. fuel and enriching uranium — technologies that could be used to make weapons. Now, nearly 40 years after the agreement was signed, South Korea wants Washington to lift that ban. The U.S. refuses to do so. Washington and Seoul were supposed to come up with a new deal this spring before the original agreement expires in March 2014. They haven’t done so, but to prevent a hiatus in nuclear trade the two decided to extend the current agreement for two years and hold additional negotiations every three months until the new expiry date. “Because our cooperation is increasingly broad and deep, there are several complex technical issues that will take some additional time and effort to resolve,” said the U.S. State Department in a statement. The stopgap extension helps avoid potential awkwardness between Park and Obama at their first summit, but it ultimately underscores the clash between Seoul’s goals to expand its nuclear-energy industry and Washington’s efforts to contain the spread of nuclear technologies that could be used to produce weapons. (PHOTOS: North Korea Ratchets Up Tension on The Peninsula) Washington’s argument is that if South Korea has enrichment and reprocessing rights, then other countries that are trying to sign nuclear-cooperation agreements with the U.S. will also ask for the same rights and undermine nonproliferation efforts. That line of thinking does not go down well in South Korea, which considers itself a