South Korean nukes and "more may be better"

Waltz’s “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better” has passed from academic to popular reading in South Korea. But is it relevant?

Kenneth Waltz’s “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better” seems to have passed from academic to popular reading in South Korea. I saw an ajumma in the park reading it while her poodle panted beside her in a dog pram. It was so uniquely Korean, I wanted to take a picture (but being shy I went home and used AI).

Waltz’s work, after filling South Korean PhD theses and academic papers in the 1980s and 1990s, seems to have returned as popular reading as South Korea’s debates securing an independent nuclear weapons program. Around 60-70% of the public now support getting nuclear weapons.

Personally, I’ve always wondered why the “More may be better” paper was popular amongst so many South Korean strategic studies and IR professors. Particularly when these are the same professors who pushed for a “Korean School of IR” - a school of thought that took into consideration Korea’s unique circumstances as opposed to the European/US centered vision of mainstream IR.

Do Waltz’s arguments make…