The 2015 US-ROK Nuclear Cooperation Agreement: Creative Compromises?

摘要

On Wednesday April 22, 2015 the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (ROK), Mark Lippert, joined the ROK's chief negotiator, Park Ro-byug in initialing the text of a new nuclear cooperation agreement in a ceremony in Seoul. The agreement followed an almost five-year negotiation process that involved significant disagreements over the ROK's aspiration to receive advance consent to develop a uranium enrichment and pyroprocessing capability. The previous agreement, reached in 1972 and extended in 1974, followed discussions between (or dictates from) a superpower and a dependent ally The maturation of the South Korean nuclear industry, the development of a bilateral trade agreement between economic partners, the rise of the North Korean nuclear program, and the new global status of the ROK provided a fundamentally different context for the nuclear cooperation renewal negotiations. As the bilateral partnership between the two countries approached an apex of positive sentiment in the early part of this decade, the contentious nuclear cooperation negotiations threatened to derail hard won progress in the maturation of the alliance. The draft agreement, delivered two years after the US. Congress extended the original deadline, was met with widespread approval from U.S. officials and the American nonproliferation community.