Kim Tae-hyo ‘de facto nuclear sharing’ vs. US officials ‘providing US insights to South Korea’
Regarding the Washington Declaration, Deputy Director of National Security Kim Tae-hyo said, "South Korea and the US have established a mechanism for information sharing and joint planning on US nuclear operations this time around." On the 26th, U.S. officials said of the "Washington Declaration," "The U.S. will provide Seoul with detailed insights and voices on U.S. contingency plans to deter and respond to any nuclear accident in the region through the Korea-U.S. Nuclear Consultative Group." “The US nuclear weapons will not be returned to the Korean Peninsula, and South Korea will not continue to control US nuclear weapons,” he told Reuters on the 26th.
At a local briefing in Washington that day, Deputy Chief of Security Office Kim said, “By including the action plan for ‘Korean-style extended deterrence’ in the Washington Declaration, we have raised the execution power of South Korea-US extended deterrence to a qualitatively different level from the past.”
“It remains to be seen whether South Korean public opinion will be satisfied,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and Wilson Center researcher. Resuming it would raise awareness about South Korea and would require South Korea to possess its own nuclear weapons or redeploy US tactical nuclear weapons,” he told Reuters.
Dooyeon Kim, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a conservative Republican strategy group, called the Washington Declaration "a major victory for the alliance, especially South Korea." We were coordinating the scenario and in the past it was considered too classified to share,” he told Reuters.
Yomiuri said, "President Yoon boasted of the achievement, saying that in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, 'the leaders of South Korea and the United States will immediately hold talks and respond swiftly, overwhelmingly, and decisively to all forces, including the United States' nuclear weapons.'" reported that day.
Aside from the Washington Declaration, US officials, who requested anonymity for the release of a comprehensive summit joint statement, stressed the importance of "peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait" with China in mind and "an attempt to change the status quo" in the Indo-Pacific, including the South China Sea. He told Yomiuri that he would oppose "a unilateral attempt."