South Korea and Japan would not easily abandon their nuclear ambitions if China and North Korea held their current speed in nuclear proliferation. Demanding that only South Korea and Japan comply with their nonproliferation obligations in Northeast Asia will be increasingly difficult to justify. However, a nuclear arms race in Northeast Korea is ultimately in nobody’s interest. Together with a variety of international and bilateral efforts to curb the proliferation trend in the region, it is also important to strengthen domestic antinuclear voices that can check and control these governments’ decisions on nuclear weapons. As long as South Korea and Japan remain democratic, going nuclear will be a complicated task.

Se Young Jang is an associate of the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a nonresident James A. Kelly Fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Air Force