March 18, 2025
SEOUL – A move by the United States energy department to designate South Korea as a “sensitive country” is likely a warning against calls for the East Asian country to have its own nuclear arms, say analysts.
The decision was said to be made by the US in January 2025 before Mr Joe Biden stepped down as president. Seoul apparently did not find out about the move until a local media outlet The Hankyoreh reported it on March 10, based on a tip-off from a US-based think-tank.
The report said the US Department of Energy (DOE) is set to add five countries, including South Korea, to the blacklist with effect from April 15. They will join the likes of China, Russia, India, Israel, North Korea, Taiwan and Iran.
Countries may be classified as “sensitive” for “national security, nuclear nonproliferation, or terrorism support reasons”, according to the department’s website.
Though the DOE did not specify reasons for South Korea’s inclusion, observers say the move is likely a warning against the country’s nuclear ambitions, and also triggered by the martial law debacle of Dec 3 that has plunged it into political turmoil.
President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is facing impeachment and criminal charges of insurrection for the martial law fiasco, had first mooted the idea of South Korea’s nuclear armament in January 2023, out of concerns over the adequacy of US “extended deterrence” in the face of North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal.
In response, the then Biden administration agreed to establish a Nuclear Consultative Group for joint responses to the North Korean threat in April 2023, which pleased Mr Yoon enough for him to back off on his pro-arms rhetoric.
But the fact that Seoul was prepared to reconsider its commitment to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty had already shaken the trust between the two allies.
And this trust was further weakened on Dec 3 when the US was caught off-guard by the martial law declaration, Yonsei University’s Dr Bong Young-shik told The Straits Times.
“The calls from the US to the Seoul authorities were not picked up that night. Where was the bilateral consultation on security matters? None. All trust was lost, evaporated. At that point, would the US still trust South Korea to have its own nuclear arms? No. So this is a move to nip the arms talk in the bud.”
Dr Bong pointed out that for the DOE to decide to blacklist South Korea in January, it meant considerations would have begun as early as December 2024, which would have coincided with the martial law declaration.
International politics professor Mason Richey from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies took a similar view. While the reasons remain “opaque”, they are likely a combination of “martial law, coupled with persistent high-level discourse on the possibility of developing a nuclear deterrent, that led the Biden administration to place South Korea on the sensitive countries list”.
Professor Jerng Dong-wook, of the Energy Systems Engineering School at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University, told ST that South Korea’s “sensitive country” listing would likely hamper future US-Korean collaboration in research and development.
But Prof Richey believed that the immediate impact on the East Asian country would likely be more “reputational than practical”.
On March 14, a DOE spokesperson downplayed the impact of the move, telling Yonhap News Agency that South Korea’s inclusion on the list “does not necessarily indicate an adversarial relationship with the United States”.
The spokesperson added that while there are no new restrictions on bilateral science and technology cooperation, “future collaborations will be subjected to greater scrutiny”.
The comments sparked speculation that another possible reason behind the designation could be the US taking steps to prevent the infringement of technology rights, following an intellectual property dispute between US nuclear power firm Westinghouse and South Korea’s Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP).
Westinghouse filed a lawsuit in 2023 claiming that the KHNP was infringing on its nuclear power plant technology after the latter was selected as the preferred bidder for the Czech Republic’s US$17 billion (S$22.6 billion) project to build two new nuclear reactors in July 2024.
Both sides eventually reached a settlement in mid-January 2025, after signing a memorandum of understanding on nuclear exports and cooperation and pledging active collaboration in the nuclear power sector.
Prof Jerng said this dispute was unlikely a key factor behind South Korea’s listing as a sensitive country, which is more “a result of rising military and political tensions on the Korean peninsula”.
The listing comes at a time when South Korea has been struggling to engage the new Trump administration with its current political leadership vacuum.
In the latest blow to diplomatic engagement between the two allies, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has opted to skip South Korea for his Indo-Pacific tour to Guam, Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines later in March.
Acting President Choi Sang-mok, who has yet to speak with US President Donald Trump, has since called for government efforts to contain any fall-out from the listing. He despatched Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Ahn Duk-geun to the US for consultations with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright this week.
But whether the Trump administration will reconsider the move by the Biden government to list South Korea as a “sensitive country” remains to be seen.
Dr Bong said: “It is a strategic leverage over South Korea. Why would Mr Trump want to give it up so fast?”
- Wendy Teo is The Straits Times’ South Korea correspondent based in Seoul. She covers issues concerning the two Koreas.