Implementing a Korea–Japan Nuclear‐Weapon‐Free Zone: Precedents, Legal Forms, Governance, Scope, Domain, Verification, Compliance and Regional Benefits

Abstract

To assess the possibility of a future denuclearized Korean peninsula it is important to consider not only US and allied security interests, but also North Korean underlying security concerns. However, beyond the North–South conflict on the Korean peninsula, there is also a longer‐term problem of Korean–Japanese relations. Both Japan and South Korea have the capacity to rapidly develop and acquire nuclear weapons. North Korean nuclear acquisition could well provide the rationale for either or both to acquire nuclear weapons. In the Northeast Asian region there is already a lengthy history of denuclearization proposals and even agreements. While the focus of previous proposals had concentrated on the Korean peninsula itself, an alternative way forward would be the initial establishment of a nuclear‐weapon‐free zone (NWFZ) between Japan and South Korea, with North Korea encouraged to join at a later date. The negotiation of a Korea–Japan NWFZ would serve to confirm and guarantee the current non‐nuclear‐weapon status of South Korea and Japan, while acting as an important confidence‐building step to address North Korea's underlying security concerns and enable it to subsequently join the NWFZ. Internationally, the commitment of the US Obama administration to a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons, the recent unanimous final document of the 2010 Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty Review Conference calling for expansion of NWFZs, and the greater openness of the USA and other nuclear powers to NWFZ establishment in areas of regional conflict, suggest that we now have a new window of opportunity for denuclearization of Northeast Asia.

North Korean Nuclear Nationalism and the Threat of Nuclear War in Korea

“…47 Alternatively, the DPRK might be invited to join such a zone at the outset by committing to its normative framework, but delaying its substantive compliance as occurred with Argentina and Brazil and the Treaty of Tlatelolco. 48 Such a zone would reduce pressure on the USA to serve as the nuclear hegemon by bringing the negative security assurances of all three nuclear weapon states into play in the region. It would be consistent either with a recessed nuclear deterrent that is fully "over-the-horizon" and never referred to; or to the elimination of traditional nuclear extended deterrence in bilateral alliances and its replacement by nuclear existential deterrence -the caution induced in crisis decision-making by the mere existence of nuclear weapons.…”

“…48 48 Michael Hamel‐Green, “Implementing a Japanese‐Korean Nuclear Weapon Free Zone: Precedents, Legal Forms, Governance, Scope and Domain, Verification and Compliance, and Regional Benefits,” paper presented at the Nautilus Institute research workshop, “Strong Connections: Australia‐Korea Strategic Relations – Past, Present and Future,” in Seoul (15–16 June 2010), at <http://www.nautilus.org/projects/akf-connections/research-workshop/research-papers/HamelGreen.pdf> (search date: 14 December 2010). …”

Beyond the Nuclear Umbrella: Re‐thinking the Theory and Practice of Nuclear Extended Deterrence in East Asia and the Pacific

“…30 30 For more detail on enabling conditions see Michael Hamel‐Green, “Implementing a Korea–Japan Nuclear‐Weapon‐Free Zone: Precedents, Legal Forms, Governance, Scope, Domain, Verification, Compliance and Regional Benefits,” this volume; Peter Hayes and Michael Hamel‐Green, “The path not taken, the way still open,” op. cit.…”