The Nuclear Strategy of the Third Nuclear Age: A Theoretical Examination for South Korea's Defense Paradigm Shift/ Hanbyeol Sohn

 

This paper aims to analyze the characteristics of the “Third Nuclear Age,” which is currently under discussion as a precursor to the emergence of a new nuclear order and environment. To achieve this, this paper scrutinize the features of the Third Nuclear Age and track the corresponding changes in nuclear strategic concepts. The Third Nuclear Age is reshaping the nuclear landscape through multifaceted interactions across different layers. This study categorizes political multipolarity, strategic integrity, and technological connectivity as the distinctive attributes of the Third Nuclear Age. Additionally, six core technologies are identified, including delivery systems, targeting, nuclear command and control, missile defense, space-cyber capabilities, and AI-based decision-making. These characteristics necessitate a reconfiguration of existing nuclear strategic concepts, shifting from deterrence stability to crisis stability, sufficiency to enoughness, offense-defense balance to comprehensive deterrence, nuclear retaliation to non-nuclear denial, and non-proliferation to technology control.

 

Keywords: Third Nuclear Age, Nuclear Order, Deterrence, Strategic Stability, Nuclear Escalation, Arms Control

 

 

A Critical Analysis of South Korea's National Security Strategy Reports and Proposals for Reform/ Yong-Sup Han

This paper intends to examine the concepts and interrelationships of national interests, national objectives, national security, and national security strategies in examples of national security strategies observed in the international community, and to derive universal concepts and standards necessary for the establishment and analysis of Korea's national security strategy. From 2004 to the present, a total of five national security strategies have been published by previous and current Korean governments. In light of the concepts and standards derived above, this paper aims to compare and analyze the current state and problems of the national security strategy in a synchronic and objective manner. This study aims to contribute to the development of Korea's national security strategy in the future by identifying and presenting corrections to the problems drawn from the analyses of the previous and current national security strategies.

 

Keywords: National Interests, National Strategy, National Security, National Security Strategy Report, Broadening the Concept of Security, New Economic Security, US-China Hegemonic Competition, South Korea's North Korea Policy

 

The British Nuclear Program: Development, Policy and Lessons for South Korea/ Peter Ward

 

As the threat from North Korea’s nuclear program continues to increase, South Korean policymakers and citizens continue to discuss the prospects for the country going nuclear. In order to make informed and prudent decisions about the tradeoffs and potential paths forward, it is necessary to understand how other nuclear weapons states succeeded in acquiring their respective nuclear deterrents.The case of Britain is highly unusual. The third nation to acquire nuclear weapons, and the first non-superpower to do so in the early 1950s. The country succeeded in testing both conventional fission and thermonuclear warheads before forging a unique and enduring nuclear partnership with the United States that allowed it to purchase strategic nuclear weapons from the US. At the same time, with its relatively small nuclear force, it has adopted a minimal effective deterrence strategy, and a nuclear command and control structure to ward off the possibility of a would-be aggressor engaging in a decapitation strike. Given limited resources and the presence of the US-ROK alliance, South Korea may consider many of these elements of the British experience applicable were it to acquire nuclear weapons. In particular, the British approach to deterrence, its command and control, and close partnership with the United States (if it were possible) could all work well to ensure that a South Korean nuclear weapons program fulfills its function and is politically and economically sustainable.

 

Keywords: British Nuclear Armament, Nuclear Strategy, Nuclear Command and Control, Nuclear Policy

 

 

Study of Threats to Israel's Nuclear Threshold/ Dongseob Lee

This study assesses the increased risk of nuclear weapons use by Israel in the Middle East in a context of growing nuclear instability, and analyzes the threat by examining the nuclear threshold-the point at which Israel would use nuclear weapons. Israel's nuclear threshold, which maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity, was refined based on scholarly research. The facilitating and deterrent factors affecting this threshold were presented to assess the threat to the nuclear threshold. The threats to Israel's nuclear threshold are categorized into past, present, and future wars. The past and present wars were evaluated based on historical facts and war situations, and the future war was forecasted based on the author's analysis. The study found that in past wars, the superiority of Israel's conventional military power, along with the support of the United States, largely acted as deterrents in preventing Israel from reaching the nuclear threshold. For the ongoing war with the quasi-state organization, it also did not pose a threat to the nuclear threshold. In the case of a future war against Iran, Israel’s nuclear threshold is expected to be greatly jeopardized by Israel’s geopolitical vulnerability, the military power of the axis of resistance, and the idea of limited nuclear war. The implications for the global nuclear order and the Korean Peninsula, if Israel threatens to use nuclear weapons in war or crosses the nuclear threshold, are then examined.

 

Keywords: Israel, Nuclear Strategy, Nuclear Threshold, Iran, Axis of Resistance

 

South Korea's Demographic Cliff and Indigenous Nuclear Armament Option/ Daehan Lee

South Korea is nominally a developed state in terms of military and economic powers, and has thus been considered as an additional member state of Group of Seven(G7). However, as its lowest birth rate in the world has been renewed every year, South Korea's demographic cliff is a fait accompli, which will undermine its efforts to maintain the current national power and growth engine. Thus, the paper first covers pessimism about overall South Korean demographic structure and the expected lack of military manpower as the state's core security problems. Also, the paper argues that the demographic change would be ignite a critical security crisis in the future, explaining about the qualitative and quantitative setback of South Korean military's outstanding conventional forces. Therefore, the paper reviews South Korea's development of indigenous nuclear weapons as a means of offsetting its economic and military decline, amid regional security conflicts and demographic cliff. The paper then concludes that South Korean nuclearization would serve as both a meaningful security measure for the aged, ultra-low birth state's future national security and a credible deterrent against neighboring enemies.

 

Keywords: Demographic Cliff, Population Decline, Population, Nuclear Armament, Nuclear Weapon