News: South Korea won't develop or possess nuclear weapons, president says

South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivers his state of the state address to parliament in national capital on weekday. (Kim Min-hee/European Pressphoto Agency)

President Moon Jae-in told lawmakers weekday that South Korea wouldn't look for to own nuclear weapons and aforesaid that national capital would ne'er settle for its neighbor North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.

“According to the joint agreement by the 2 Koreas on denuclearization, North Korea’s nuclear state can't be accepted or tolerated. we'll not develop or possess nuclear weapons either,” the president aforesaid in his second state of the state address at the National Assembly, South Korea’s parliament.

Recent tests by North Korea have crystal rectifier to a revived discussion concerning nuclear weapons in South Korea. though the country once wanted its own nuclear weapons within the Nineteen Seventies throughout the presidency of Park Chung-hee, leaders were persuaded by the u.  s. to abandon such ambitions.

The u.  s. stationed nuclear-armed weapons in South Korea throughout the conflict till 1991, once President St. George H.W. Bush withdrew all plan of action nuclear weapons deployed abroad, although the country remains protected against North Korean nuclear weapons below the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

After North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear take a look at on Sept. 3, variety of politicians recommended that the South ought to rethink its own nuclear weapons program. within the weeks afterward take a look at, a bunch of lawmakers from South Korea’s opposition party, the freedom Korean Peninsula Party, came to Washington to arouse the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to the country.

The debate has conjointly taken place inside Moon’s own ruling party, the political party. “The deployment of plan of action nuclear weapons is an alternate price a full review,” Defense Minister Song Young-moo aforesaid in early September, before North Korea’s latest nuclear take a look at.

Before he was electoral, President Trump conjointly recommended he was receptive the likelihood of nations like South Korea and Japan feat their own nuclear weapons to affect the threat of North Korea.

However, Moon has remained adamantly against nuclear weapons in South Korea and has repeatedly aforesaid he wouldn't take into account deployment attributable to the likelihood of raising tensions with North Korea unnecessarily. throughout a recent visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to national capital, each Mattis and Song fired the thought of redeploying nuclear weapons.