hankyoreh

By Peter Hayes & Chung-in Moon

Declassified CIA papers cast new light on South Korea's attempt to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s and show that the program continued for at least two years after the US thought it had ended. With some in South Korea again discussing a nuclear option, Peter Hayes and Chung-in Moon find lessons for today.

In recent years, many previously classified US diplomatic cables have been released relating to nuclear proliferation in South Korea during the later years of the Park Chung Hee era in the 1970s. They paint a more complete picture of the nation's attempts to develop nuclear weapons than was previously known, especially in the period between 1976 and 1978.

In light of current discussions in South Korea about developing nuclear weapons, it is important to look back and realize that Park's aggressive nuclear behavior was largely triggered by eroding or ambiguous security assurances from Washington, especially the end of the Vietnam War and President Jimmy Carter's decision to withdraw key American forces in South Korea, including tactical nuclear weapons. The uncertainty of the period left Park wanting the country to have its own nuclear deterrent.

Declassified US State Department cables are the foundation of an important study published in 2011 by Sung Gul Hong on Park's attempts to make a nuclear weapon, including in the post-1975 period when the United States threatened to rupture the security alliance if the Republic of Korea (ROK) proceeded down this path.1 But, as Hong concluded, far from making South Korea more secure, Park's toying with the nuclear option made him an unpredictable and even dangerous client who needed restraint in US policy-makers' eyes.

Global Asia has studied a recently declassified set of documents posted by the CIA that provides important new information on Park's efforts, and on the US response. The documents show that considerably greater proliferation of missiles and fissile materials and related technology was going on even after 1976 and up to 1978 than was previously known. Most accounts have the proliferation activity ending in 1976.

The most important of the CIA documents is South Korea: Nuclear Developments and Strategic Decisionmaking (sic), issued in June 1978 and released in 2005 under a routine 25-year declassification program.2 The document has languished largely unnoticed on the Web since it was released, so in this essay, we review the insights provided by the report.

Given the public debate in Seoul about nuclear weapons, we believe that there are lessons to be learned from Park's failed proliferation strategy. It was a misguided effort but it was triggered by real security concerns. What mattered then, and what matters today, is the ability of South Korea and the United States to respond to North Korean military aggression. In that light, the North Koreans know they would lose a military confrontation, but nothing could justify North Korean nuclear weapons more than South Korea reactivating its nuclear weapons program. South Korea paid a high price for Park's nuclear program. We see no reason to repeat this history.

KEY FINDINGS

In late 1974, Park - a former army general who took power in 1961 and ruled the ROK until his death in 1979 - authorized a program to develop nuclear weapons technology. In January 1976, he ended negotiations with France to obtain reprocessing technology, and by December 1976 he suspended the nuclear weapons program under immense pressure from the United States. What is less well known, though, is the proliferation activity that continued after 1976, partly in response to the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons included in the pullout of the 2nd Infantry Division, Hong has shown.

With Park fearing that the United States would abandon South Korea after the Vietnam War, despite the ROK having sent troops to that conflict, North Korean aggression seemed particularly menacing. A commando raid on the Blue House in January 1968, followed three days later by the seizure of the USS Pueblo, created a climate of fear. In addition, Nixon and Kissinger's opening to China without prior consultation with South Korea left Park wondering if Washington would also open a channel to the North behind the South's back. North Korean infiltration tunnels were discovered under the DMZ in 1974-75, and Park also witnessed the murder of his wife by a pro-North Korean assassin in 1974. Another key factor was the unilateral withdrawal of the US 7th Infantry Division in 1971, and on-going discussion of further withdrawals.

American politicians and journalists also increased their criticism of Park's dictatorial regime after he institutionalized his rule. His sense of abandonment by the United States was acute.

South Korea's confidence in the US declined still further after Jan. 26, 1977, when incoming President Jimmy Carter ordered the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the ROK along with the 2nd infantry division.

South Korean nuclear researchers believed that "while bowing to US preferences on the line of work they pursue, certain activities can and should be undertaken to keep Seoul's nuclear option open," the report said. A program was undertaken to acquire a missile that could threaten Pyongyang, while long-term nuclear fuel cycle technology was sought to keep the bomb option open.

In the 1978 report, the CIA found:

• "No evidence that any nuclear weapons design work is under way at present.

• "No evidence that the South Koreans are trying to acquire a uranium enrichment capability.

• "No evidence of any current activity related to the acquisition of a reprocessing capability.

• "No evidence of stockpiling of fissile material.

• "No evidence of work on weapons fabrication."

But, the CIA concluded, South Koreans were facing decisions in the 1978-80 period that could affect the lead time to acquire nuclear weapons later. "Among the decisions that are likely to arise are those concerning whether or not to assemble a prototype and then produce in quantity a surface-to-surface missile, and what to do with the substantial investment Korea has in nuclear research personnel." Overall, the report argued, the most important factor would be South Korea's "perception of the reliability of the US security commitment and, conversely, the imminence of the North Korean threat."

It is worth noting here that the CIA's relatively relaxed interpretation of Park's nuclear program in 1978 is contrary to the widespread rumor in South Korea that the CIA might have orchestrated his assassination on Oct. 26, 1979, in order to stop his nuclear ambitions.3

PHASE 1: NUCLEAR MISSILE PROGRAM

The missile program (called Baekgom, or White Bear) was initiated on May 14, 1974, at Park's instruction.4 By 1975, a dedicated nuclear weapons program had emerged, code-named Project 890, the CIA report says, with three teams working on missile design, nuclear and chemical warheads under the Agency for Defense Development (ADD). Korean scientists recruited from abroad by mid-1975 were working on warheads, high explosives fabrication, and computer codes. The warhead design effort involved about fifty scientists and technicians; the chemical warhead team was smaller, but by mid-1976, the missile team numbered more than 250. "This focus on missile systems," the CIA noted, "implies an interest in acquiring a number of nuclear devices," although exactly which type was not clear to it. Moreover, "It is clear that Seoul has not addressed the question of physical and chain-of-command control of nuclear weapons," the report said.

By December 1976, the ADD completed its missile research and development site, Hong wrote, where work focused on modifying the US Nike-Hercules missile as a surface-to-surface weapon. Even without modification, the CIA added, it could already hit Pyongyang. South Korean modifications aimed to extend its reach to hit command centers and equipment within a 350 km range.5

Not surprisingly, the attempts to obtain American missile technology met with strong American opposition in 1975 and 1976, which forced the ADD to agree to limit the range of the missiles to 180 km and the warhead to 440 kg. As of May 1976, an initial design was nearly complete. The CIA was able to obtain detailed technical parameters for the ADD's research: "The rocket motors, airframe, control system, and onboard guidance system would be dramatically upgraded or entirely redesigned," the CIA report said. "Using French assistance for both propellant and production technology, the ADD succeeded in casting a reduced-scale motor." ADD also circumvented US opposition to its acquisition of a Lockheed propellant plant from California by buying the manufacturing technology from a French company.6

The ADD decided not to modify the standard Nike-Hercules tracking radar with technology obtained from US firms because the ADD viewed it as running "too high a risk of exposing the program," the report notes. Instead, it opted for the "use of solid-state electronics rather than the vacuum-tube technology of the standard Nike-Hercules." By December 1976, the ADD had not produced a prototype missile when the program was suspended, and it remained in suspension until September 1977 when it received a green light to proceed anew.

FUEL-CYCLE LINKAGE

By 1974, South Korea also had undertaken a massive nuclear power program and had already moved toward advanced fuel fabrication and reprocessing facilities that entailed separating enough plutonium for about one weapon per year. South Korea attempted to buy pilot reprocessing plants from Belgium, but the United States and Canada pushed the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to drop those plans.

The United States was particularly concerned about KAERI’s negotiations to buy a Canadian NRX heavy water research reactor that would provide a pathway to plutonium. In 1975, KAERI negotiated a loan with Belgium to purchase a small mixed (plutonium-uranium) nuclear fabrication facility. "The Belgian facility would have given Korea the last key of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle," the report said.

The plans foundered when Canada suspended its talks about supplying the NRX to South Korea - this being the same reactor from which India had recently diverted plutonium for its 1974 nuclear test. Both the United States and Canada then used their financing leverage over nuclear power plants on order to force KAERI to drop its plans for both reprocessing and for a mixed oxide research plants. "Planners at the Blue House," stated the CIA, "viewed [these facilities] as a necessary component of a covert program within the military to develop a nuclear weapons capability."

Park suspended this effort in December 1976 after strong US diplomatic intervention. But, noted the CIA, "His willingness to suspend 890 was strongly conditioned by the poor performance of the ADD ... and by the lack of any immediate need for nuclear weapons development."

Park’s willingness was due primarily to demonstrations of American resolve in 1975 and 1976. US Defense Secretary James Schlesinger met with Park on Aug. 27, 1975, at which time the two men agreed that whatever might be said publicly about nuclear weapons to reinforce morale, in fact Seoul was more vulnerable to nuclear attack than Pyongyang, and US-ROK forces could "cope with a North Korean attack without the use of nuclear weapons." 7

Park also may have been impressed by the US response to the attack by North Koreans at Panmunjom on Aug. 18, 1976, in which two American soldiers were killed. US and ROK troops were put on high alert, an armada of warships was sent off North Korea’s coast and B-52 bombers were sent daily on practice bombing runs.8

The impact of this event, combined with the US threat to cut off support for South Korea’s nuclear power program, prompted Park to end Project 890 two years after it began, according to an internal State Department document.9

‘UNGUIDED ROCKETS’

The CIA report also cast new light on the internal dynamics of Park’s nuclear weapons program. Although cabinet-level discussions of a nuclear weapons program began as early as 1969, a decision to proceed was made solely by Park in late 1974 based on a non-specific briefing. Disturbingly, the CIA noted, the policy planning for the nuclear weapons program "was erratic, even haphazard."

"A written study assessing the pros and cons of developing, deploying and using nuclear weapons was not, and still has not, been produced," reported the CIA. This was compounded by a tendency of Korean research and development agencies in general to overreach. Consequently, these agencies were "operating essentially as unguided rockets." The ADD in particular, they noted, "intentionally exaggerated its own capabilities and depreciated the difficulty of organizing sophisticated programs" in order to maximize its budget allocation. Only when Project 890 was cancelled did Park transfer responsibility for overhauling the nuclear programs to the Blue House, the CIA said. The Senior Secretary in charge of the heavy-chemical and defense industry, O Won-chol, attempted to rationalize the nuclear research process via a Cabinet review, thereby reducing the independence of the nuclear research institutes.

These institutes were aware of the political risks that their activities posed to South Korea, but tried to manage these risks by arguing that they were only hedging against an uncertain future. Blue House staffers compared South Korea with Israel, noting that US military aid flowed in the midst of suspicions that Israel was developing nuclear weapons. According to the CIA report, these officials believed "that the United States - while opposing short-term weapons work in Korea - would eventually recognize and tolerate Korea’s need to have an independent nuclear capability."

Only in late 1975, the CIA stated, did an informal group of Korean officials who had previously passively accepted the nuclear weapons program emerge as bureaucratic foes. The clinching argument was the threat to the alliance with the United States. However, the CIA’s portrayal of an emerging set of opponents may not be correct. Others have argued that rather than resisting, these officials may have been protecting the missile and nuclear activities from challenge by other actors. On this score history remains murky.

PHASE 2: REACTIVATING ELEMENTS OF PROJECT 890

Jimmy Carter’s election confirmed Park’s worst fears of a precipitous withdrawal of US ground forces and nuclear weapons from Korea. Indeed, within a week of taking office, Carter ordered that a plan be developed to withdraw US nuclear weapons,10 even before a formal review was initiated on Jan. 29, 1977, including consideration of "ROK nuclear intentions and efforts to acquire advanced missile technology." 11

The government-controlled South Korean media soon began discussing a nuclear option starting in May 1977. The CIA characterized the propaganda offensive in a separate report as "designed to reassure South Koreans that the Park government was taking all steps needed to ensure security against the North, and also to pressure the United States to rethink its withdrawal plans." 12 The agency concluded that there was no evidence that the ROK government was actually debating acquiring nuclear weapons, nor were there any signs of new research and development to support such a clandestine program.

By August 1977, US officials had serious misgivings about the impact of withdrawing nuclear weapons from Korea. A CIA memorandum that August, entitled The Implications of Withdrawing Nuclear Weapons From Korea, suggested that removing US nuclear weapons was in accord with the North’s strategic goals, but its leaders would still know that the United States could deliver them at any moment or reintroduce them to the Peninsula itself. South Korea, however, got a different message. "Seoul will read the total withdrawal of nuclear weapons as evidence of US intent to forego their use in a future conflict." 13

The memo described how a sharp rupture in the alliance could threaten arms sales from the United States, could worsen trade relations, and could even accelerate the rate of US withdrawal and lead to the resumption of Park’s nuclear weapons program. "The withdrawal of all US nuclear weapons," it concluded, "will clearly strengthen Park’s determination to move toward military self-reliance." The Carter Administration withdrew 1,000 American troops in September 1977 and another 500 in November 1978, before he reversed the withdrawal policy in 1979.

As of June 1978, by the time the Strategic Decisionmaking report was published, the ADD nuclear weapons designers had been redirected from Project 890 to high explosives and chemical warfare work. Of course, the line between nuclear and non-nuclear remained problematic because, as the CIA analysts explained, "an established high-explosives capability would also be advantageous to Korea if a nuclear weapons program were resumed."

For their part, the missile engineers were back at work by September 1977 when the ADD was given the go-ahead to resume work on extending the range of the modified Nike-Hercules. As of June 1978, the CIA reported that the ADD’s missile researchers were distributed across three of the six directorates of its Advanced Weapons Center at Taejon.

The ADD began to test-fire the modified Nike-Hercules in April 1978 "to demonstrate - or give the illusion of - its ability to develop a long-range surface-to-surface missile," the analysts wrote, and thereby win Park’s approval for a missile with a 3,500 km range to be available by about 1985.

The CIA analysts admitted that they had no specific information on the type of nuclear warhead that ADD might develop for such a missile. "Refinement in weapons design requires extensive testing of high explosives at a site that consists of a firing pad and bunker, along with elaborate instrumentation, for example, ultra high-speed cameras, flash X-ray systems, and oscilloscopes. Seoul has acquired some of this instrumentation, but we are not certain where the equipment is installed."

The CIA analysts inferred that the size and type of nuclear warhead would be strongly influenced by the missile. They anticipated that a South Korean warhead would be limited to a nuclear implosion system of 300-350 kilograms. They believed that South Korea could meet the constraints with a "simple conservative design" with a yield from a few to up to twenty kilotons.

KEEPING THE OPTION OPEN

According to the CIA, Park had not decided to actually build bombs in late 1974, only to acquire the capacity to do so as a "precautionary measure carrying a tolerable level of risk." Similarly, in spite of the Carter attempt to withdraw US nuclear weapons from Korea in 1977-78, they found "there is no perception of immediate needs or opportunities for acquiring nuclear weapons."

The CIA recognized that by 1978, South Korea was heavily invested in light water reactors, largely financed by the US Eximbank. They noted that spent fuel from these reactors was an easier, faster route to obtaining fissile material than uranium enrichment. This was because until 1974, it was perfectly legal to stockpile reprocessed plutonium, provided the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguarded supplies.

By 1978 the only way to get a reprocessing plant was to build one, and the United States had already blocked supplier nations from providing such plants to Korea. The American low-enriched and Canadian natural uranium that ended up as spent fuel in Korea after the fission process in earlier reactors also was subject to US and Canadian vetoes against it being reprocessed. Moreover, whether taken from a light water or a heavy water reactor, diverting even a few assemblies ran a high risk of detection, the CIA concluded.

As the CIA observed: "Planners at KAERI in the early 1970s recognized the importance of reprocessing to a nuclear weapons program, but they were primarily interested in reprocessing as it related to long-term nuclear power development." Still, even in 1978, many Korean planners believed that not only was South Korea obliged to assume more responsibility for its own defense, but "that such ‘self defense’ may eventually require nuclear weapons development," the CIA concluded.

Furthermore, the agency said, on-going dual-use research work on missiles, high explosives, and heavy water routes to power reactor development sustained these incremental attempts to obtain technology, not least due to institutional momentum. "Given the sophisticated technology requirements set by the type of nuclear weapons system Seoul has considered developing, some planners believe that their country should do more than rely on advances in nuclear technology to shorten the lead time to a bomb," the report stated. "The strongest pressures in this regard arise quite naturally from the nuclear research community."

The CIA concluded that Seoul would be greatly influenced by whether ground troop withdrawal by the United States would be completed and what impact that would have on the risk of a North Korean attack. "Irrespective of the ground troop question, however, South Korea will continue to question whether the United States would employ nuclear weapons on its behalf," the report states. "Waning confidence in the US nuclear umbrella, particularly if accompanied by a decline of US influence in Seoul, would strengthen the hand of those who want to pursue a nuclear weapons option."

ENTER CHUN

South Korea’s desire to become a missile power apparently continued into 1979, after the CIA’s June 1978 Strategic Decisionmaking report was produced. On Aug. 29, 1979, Congressman Anthony Beilenson wrote to then US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that the ROK government had obtained from US firms in the Los Angeles area "the specifications, engineering drawings, instructions and designs, blueprints and certain assembly equipment employed in the United States Atlas Centaur [missile] program." "Further," wrote Beilenson, "I am told that nose cone materials, alloys and certain guidance systems have also been acquired … the Republic of Korea is now engaged in the procurement of associated computer equipment and software packages that would substantially upgrade and complement their current abilities to continue in this endeavor." 14 What action was taken on this letter is unknown.

In the end, Seoul’s nuclear ambitions and missile aspirations were reined in by political rather than geopolitical considerations. Park was now dead from an assassin’s bullet, and after General Chun Doo-hwan seized power in a 1980 military coup, he was desperate to win support from the Reagan Administration. Chun downsized KAERI in 1981, in the course of which it was renamed the Korea Energy Research Institute and he scrapped the residual nuclear weapons and missile programs.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

This fascinating CIA narrative is not merely of historical interest but provides important lessons on how the South might respond to North Korea’s current nuclear capability.

First, it shows that even Park’s iron-fisted dictatorship could not conduct a clandestine nuclear weapons program without the United States quickly realizing what was going on. Given today’s democracy and openness, a clandestine nuclear weapons program is even less possible than it was in 1978.

Of course, current domestic advocates of South Korean nuclear armament know this and welcome disclosure, precisely because this puts maximum pressure on the United States to either re-introduce its own nuclear weapons or coerce the North to denuclearize and co-operate with South Korea and the international community. This position arguably mirrors the evolution of Park’s position from the early effort to develop nuclear weapons to using the nuclear option as a bargaining chip with the Americans.

Park was a military man, and he must have realized that nuclear weapons would only increase the South’s vulnerability to Soviet attack. In essence, Park strove for symbolic nuclear status rather than a meaningful nuclear force, and the effort backfired badly. Today’s proponents of a South Korean nuclear weapon would enter the same cul-de-sac as Park - with the additional risk of prompting an unstable nuclear arms race on the Korean Peninsula.

Second, Park’s strategy failed both militarily and politically. South Korea gained little actual weapons technology, and his threats undermined trust and confidence from Washington even as US officials were already attempting to reverse Carter’s withdrawal policy for fundamental strategic reasons.

Similarly today, South Korea proliferating nuclear weapons would harm the alliance and could lead to international sanctions, trade losses, the undermining of Japan’s non-nuclear commitments and strategic threats including the possible targeting of South Korean cities by China or Russia. Outside Korea, the current rhetoric appears irresponsible and demeaning to Korea’s dignity in light of its planned hosting of the Global Nuclear Summit in March 2012 and the efforts to renew and amend the US-ROK nuclear cooperation agreement in 2014.

Third, the outcome of the military crisis of August 1976 over North Korean aggression suggests that the massive mobilization of conventional force is what mattered, not the relatively distant threat of nuclear attack. The same lesson applies today. What matters at the DMZ is the ability of South Korea and the United States to respond to North Korean military aggression. North Korea knows it would lose and the South’s superior conventional forces backed by the US are almost certainly sufficient to deter or respond to a North Korean attack, whether nuclear or conventional.

An important factor in Park backing off his proliferation program was the creation in 1978 of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command, which had both wartime and peacetime operational control over South Korean forces. This meant that the US military would become automatically involved in a war in Korea at the outset and was a reassuring trip-wire for Park. Likewise, after Reagan reasserted the US security commitment to South Korea upon his election in 1979, Chun dropped all nuclear and missile programs, demonstrating that nuclear weapons tend to create stress on the alliance. This is as true today as it was when the CIA wrote its report.

Fourth, the CIA report wrongly concludes that unilateral withdrawal by the US could lead to the resumption of South Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In fact, the eventual unilateral withdrawal more than a decade later, in 1991-92, left lethal US conventional forces in place and did not lead either to war or to South Korean proliferation. Indeed, it arguably prepared the way for engagement with the North in a way that slowed Pyongyang’s nuclear proliferation by a decade, and led to its current isolation.

In the mid-1970s, the North Koreans were assuredly also intensely aware of the South’s nuclear drive, and this knowledge likely accelerated the North’s own early program.15 South Korean proliferation today would make it far more difficult to negotiate the denuclearization of North Korea. An inter-Korean nuclear arms race would almost certainly lead to a new Cold War in the region involving China and Japan.

The North’s continuing perception of a threat after nuclear weapons have been removed from the Peninsula for nearly two decades indicates the depth of North Korean distrust and fear of the United States. The mere possibility of nuclear retaliation by the United States is a great motivator in Pyongyang.

Finally, it is remarkable to us that during periods of improved inter-Korean and US-North Korea relations, dialogue and engagement have led to progress in stopping the North from gaining more nuclear weapons capacity. The opposite is also true - the North accelerated its proliferation activity during the height of the Cold War when Reagan confronted the former Soviet Union in the region, and again when President George W. Bush downgraded and degraded relations with Pyongyang.

The lesson for politicians and strategists today is obvious.

Chung-in Moon is Professor of Political Science, Yonsei University, Seoul, and is Editor-in-Chief of Global Asia. Peter Hayes is Director of the Nautilus Institute for Security & Sustainability and Professor of Global Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and is a member of the Editorial Board of Global Asia. Bruce Scott of the Nautilus Institute also contributed to this article.

NOTES

1 S.G. Hong, "The Search for Deterrence: Park’s Nuclear Option," in B.K. Kim and E. Vogel, ed, The Park Chung Hee Era, The Transformation of South Korea, Harvard University Press, 2011, pp. 483-510.

2 US Central Intelligence Agency National Foreign Assessment Center, South Korea: Nuclear Developments and Strategic Decisionmaking, June 1978, declassified for release, October 2005, p. I, at: www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0001254259/DOC_0001254259.pdf

3 This speculative theory is based on prior contact between Park’s assassin, then head of the Korean CIA Kim Jae-kyu, and the CIA.

4 Byung-jin Park, "Story on South Korea’s Weapons Development- The Case of Baekgom Guided Missile, a Signal Of Military Self-Reliance," Segye Ilbo, Oct. 5, 2010.

5 US Central Intelligence Agency National Foreign Assessment Center, op cit, p. 4. Hong provides a detailed account of the missile and propellant research and acquisition activities that entailed subterfuge and multiple purchasing strategies to evade US surveillance and controls; op cit, pp. 494-495.

6 S.G. Hong, op cit, p. 495.

7 In "Memorandum of Conversation, Seoul, August 27, 1975," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Vol. E–12, Documents on East and Southeast Asia, 1973–1976, Doc. 272.

8 See the account of this event in P. Hayes, Pacific Powderkeg: American Nuclear Dilemmas in Korea, Lexington Press, 1991, pp. 60-62.

9 Section 6, "Study Prepared by the Office of International Security Affairs in the Department of Defense, Washington," circa Jan. 16, 1976, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Vol. E–12, Documents on East and Southeast Asia, 1973–1976, Doc. 274, at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve12/d274

10 "Secure Telephone Conversation with Secretary Harold Brown on Wednesday, January 26, 1977," p. 1, marked Carter Library, Declassified E.O. 12958, Sec.3.S PER 1/8/98 NSS Hr RE NV-96-156, copy kindly provided by Sung Gul Hong.

11 Z. Brzezinski, Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 13, National Security Council, Jan. 29, 1977.

12 US Central Intelligence Agency National Foreign Assessment Center, East Asia Review, RP EAR 78-003, Sept. 5, 1978, p. 5.

13 US Central Intelligence Agency, Regional and Political Analysis Memo, The Implications of Withdrawing Nuclear Weapons From Korea, RPM 77-10210 M, August 11, 1977, p. 2.

14 A. Beilenson, letter to Cyrus Vance, Aug. 20, 1979, released under US Freedom of Information Act request to Nautilus Institute, May 21, 1982.

15 See B. Jack et al, The South Korean Case: A Nuclear Weapons Program Embedded in an Environment of Great Power Concerns, Vol. II, Regional Rivalries and Nuclear Responses, Pan Heuristics Final Report to US Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA 001-77-C-0052, February 28, 1978, p. II-42.