Permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia 
through the abolition of extended deterrence and the dismantling of alliances!

Ko Young Dae / Co-Representative of SPARK

At this very moment, nuclear confrontations on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia are even more intensifying. Regional countries are engaging in an unprecedented nuclear confrontation by strengthening extended deterrence and nuclear alliance, adopting highly aggressive doctrine of preemptive nuclear strike (with the exception of China’s no-first-use doctrine), enhancing nuclear forces, and deploying tactical nuclear weapons in the field, thus lowering the threshold for nuclear use and significantly increasing their reliance on nuclear weapons. 

In 2023, The ROK and the U.S. established the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) and formulated the ‘Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula’. These guidelines focus on increasing the frequency and intensity of the deployment of U.S. strategic assets, such as strategic bombers and nuclear submarines, on the Korean Peninsula, while also integrating the U.S. nuclear forces and South Korea’s advanced conventional forces through Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI). This is a strengthening of extended deterrence at the policy and strategic level, aiming to maximize deterrence and threat against North Korea by increasing the survivability of nuclear delivery systems and improving the precision of nuclear strikes through CNI, thereby enhancing their effectiveness. 

Prior to this, South Korea and the U.S. established Operational Plans 5015 and 2022 against North Korea. These plans are the operational plans of the Indo-Pacific Command (ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command) led by conventional force, and are based on preemptive strikes and retaliatory attacks against North Korea. In addition, the U.S. Strategic Command’s Operation Plan 8010-12 against North Korea, led by nuclear forces, is being implemented. This plan is also based on a nuclear preemptive strike and retaliatory attacks against North Korea. With the implementation of the ‘Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula’ and CNI, it is more likely that Operational Plans 5015 and 2022 will be linked with Operational Plan 8010-12 and operated as subsystems of it, accordingly increasing the likelihood that the deterrence and operations against North Korean will be carried out with nuclear forces. If Operation Plan 2022 is entirely transformed into a nuclear operation plan, as the South Korean government wishes, nuclear confrontation on the Korean Peninsula will intensify further. 

The United States developed low-yield nuclear warheads of 5-7 kilotons during the first Trump administration and deployed them operationally on nuclear submarines in 2019. The deployment of these tactical nuclear weapons has increased the likelihood that the United States may use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a crisis or at the outset of a war on the Korean Peninsula. In the second Trump administration, if these tactical nuclear weapons are mounted on nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be further lowered. 

In 2022, the DPRK revised its ‘The Law on the DPRK’s Nuclear Forces Policy’, shifting from a second-strike, defensive nuclear doctrine to a first-strike (preemptive), offensive nuclear doctrine. This is a countermeasure to the Indo-Pacific command’s operational plan 5015 and 2022, which are centered around preemptive attack. The DPRK has also deployed tactical nuclear weapons, including the Whasan-31, mounted on eight types of delivery systems. ‘The Law on the DPRK’s Nuclear Forces Policy’ stipulates that nuclear weapons can be used “in case the need for operation for preventing the expansion and protraction of a war and taking the initiative in the war in contingency is inevitably raised,” (Article 6, Paragraph 4). The DPRK is expected to launch preemptive strikes against (reinforced) U.S. forces at sea and on land using either unmanned underwater attack vehicles (Haeil-1/2/5-23) or short-range ballistic missiles with survival rates enhanced through evasive maneuver. 

In this way, the DPRK and the U.S. are engaged in a nuclear confrontation more intense than any other region on Earth, aiming to use nuclear weapons in situations where war is imminent or in the early stages of war with the establishment of a preemptive strike operation plan and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the field, lowering the threshold for nuclear use and increasing reliance on nuclear weapons.

Strengthening mutual (extended) deterrence between the DPRK and the United States is an inevitable product of strengthening the alliance. Alliance and (extended) deterrence are two sides of the same coin. In 2023, the leaders of South Korea, the United States, and Japan established a de facto trilateral military alliance at the Camp David summit and pledged to strengthen extended deterrence against North Korea, as part of which they adopted the ‘Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula’(2024.7) and the U.S.-Japan’s ‘Guidelines for Extended Deterrence’(2024.12) In response to this, in 2024, the DPRK and Russia restored its alliance by signing a ‘Russia-DPRK comprehensive strategic partnership treaty’ Article 4 (military assistance during wartime) and Article 8 (strengthening defense capabilities during peacetime) of this treaty imply the possibility of Russia providing extended deterrence to North Korea. 

The ‘Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance’ (2024), which the Biden administration has established and the Trump administration is expected to accept, “directs that the U.S. be able to deter Russia, the PRC, and the DPRK simultaneously in peacetime, crisis, and conflict situations,” attempting an anachronistic shift in extended deterrence. If Russia, China, and North Korea are simultaneously deterred, the targets of deterrence will expand and become more layered, leading to an intensification of nuclear confrontations, with a rapid increase in nuclear forces and reliance on nuclear weapons. The simultaneous deterrence of Russia, China, and North Korea by the United States is in line with the regionalization/globalization of US-led alliances, such as the expansion of NATO into the Pacific, inducing the strengthening of the North Korea-China-Russia alliance and their extended deterrence against the U.S. As a result, a new Cold War system of a zero-sum game emerges, where alliances and extended deterrence between blocs, including Korea-US-Japan versus North Korea-China-Russia in Northeast Asia, clash at both regional and global levels. In particular, if the ‘American version of the Iron Dome’ promoted by the second Trump administration is established, the nuclear balance will dramatically tilt in favor of the United States, leading to a nuclear Armageddon that will surpass the Cold War era and potentially hasten the end of humanity.

However, any threat in the name of deterrence or any preemptive strike in the name of an imminent attack by an enemy is illegal. The threat of nuclear weapon violates Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat of force, and Article 1, Paragraph 4 of the TPNW, which prohibits the threat of nuclear weapons use, with no exceptions. The use of nuclear weapons violates the principle of distinction, the principle of prohibiting unnecessary suffering, and the Martens clause under international humanitarian law. The preemptive attack, whether conventional or nuclear, violates Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which stipulates the exercise of the right to self-defense (the use of defensive force) after an ‘armed attack’ by an adversary, and is contrary to the principle of necessity and proportionality.

Extended deterrence and threat through force, and preemptive attacks destroy peace in peacetime and are bound to bring crises and wars. Not to mention it goes without saying that nuclear war would utterly annihilate humanity’s lives, objects, and nature. Therefore, the international community must urgently abolish the doctrines of extended deterrence and preemptive attacks, and dismantle military alliances that adopt these illegal doctrines. With this, the tarnished United Nations Charter (Article 2/ Paragraph 4, Article 51) and the UN-led collective security can also be revived.

The only way to prevent war and permanently establish peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia is to conclude a peace agreement on the Korean Peninsula to legally and institutionally end the Korean War, realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula by guaranteeing the North’s regime and security through the conclusion of the North-U.S. non-aggression treaty and, based on this, replace extended deterrence and military alliances with a regional common security framework for Northeast Asia. Furthermore, this will serve as the priming water for the establishment of a Northeast Asia nuclear-free zone and global denuclearization.