The “Second” US-RoK Nuclear Conflict: President Carter, Withdrawal of US Forces, and South Korea’s Nuclear Hedging

South Korea launched its clandestine nuclear weapons program (Project 890) in the early 1970s, but suspended it in 1976 under strong pressure from Washington. President Nixon’s disengagement policy from Asia including the reduction of U.S. forces from South Korea increased President Park Chung-hee’s fear of abandonment from his patron, which led to the latter’s endeavors to acquire an independent nuclear deterrent. This “first” nuclear conflict between Washington and Seoul in the first half of the 1970s appeared to have been resolved by the cancellation of the ROK-French reprocessing deal in 1976, but it was only a temporary success for U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy. When Jimmy Carter took power in 1977, his plans to remove U.S. tactical nuclear weapons and withdraw all the U.S. forces from South Korea reignited the dormant conflict between the two allies. President Park started to consider the option of going nuclear again and secretly pursued several ways to develop relevant nuclear and missile technology. Although South Korea adopted a less assertive way of pursuing its nuclear option at this time, it still worried U.S. policy makers and may have affected their decisions on South Korea. This “second” nuclear conflict during the Carter administration has not been thoroughly researched yet by existing scholarship due to limited accessibility to primary sources. Therefore, it is still questionable whether or how much Park’s nuclear hedging strategy influenced the Carter administration’s plans for withdrawing U.S. forces from South Korea. Based on newly declassified documents both from the United States and South Korea, this paper will examine in what way Park’s nuclear strategy affected the Carter administration’s disengagement policy from South Korea and this policy’s degree of success.