Can South Korea be a nuclear middle power?

A “nuclear middle power” is an oxymoron to scholars but would a nuclear South Korea change this?

Recent debates on South Korea securing an independent nuclear weapons capacity have addressed several issues, including strategic relevance and operational utility, its impact on the U.S. alliance, how it will affect the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula, and its contribution to the regional arms competition. Less discussed has been the question of South Korea as a “nuclear middle power” — an oxymoron to many scholars of middle power diplomacy.

The modern conceptualization of the middle power was born in the heyday of liberal internationalism with the formation of the United Nations in the 1940s. Up until the late 1960s, individual middle powers toyed with the idea of securing nuclear weapons. Australia and Canada at certain stages sought nuclear armament. However, their renunciation of that aim soon became associated with the wider aura of “do-goodism” or “good international citizenship” which from that point onwards, marked the concept.

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