Where Is the Nuclear Nation Going?: Hopes and Fears over Nuclear Energy in South Korea after the Fukushima Disaster

On 27 December 2009, a South Korean consortium led by Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) signed an $18.6 billion contract with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the sale of several APR 1400–type Korean nuclear reactors. The news was very surprising: few people had expected South Korea to triumph over its competitors, who included the United States, France, and Japan. After the announcement of this contract, the approval rating of President Lee Myung Bak, who flew to the UAE on 26 December to support the KEPCO consortium in their bid, immediately rose from around 30 percent to almost 50 percent. South Korea then signed a subsequent pact with the UAE to operate the reactors, doubling the value of the original contract to $40 billion. Current plans are to build the first nuclear reactor for the UAE by 2017. As a result, South Korea has suddenly transformed itself from a country that imports nuclear technology into one that exports nuclear technology.

According to one estimate, among the citizens of the many nations with nuclear reactors (and/or nuclear bombs), the South Korean public has the most favorable attitude toward nuclear energy. To understand this attitude, we need to look briefly into the history of nuclear energy in South Korea. During the introduction of the idea of nuclear power into Korea, from the 1910s to 1945, nuclear energy was considered a modernizing and empowering force that would develop and strengthen the nation. The dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, near the end of World War II, killed many innocent civilians and forced Japan to surrender. However, these events simultaneously liberated Korea from thirty-six years of Japanese colonial control, and Koreans viewed the atomic bomb as a liberating force, as producing freedom and reflecting hope and promise. The events also symbolized the superpower nature of the Western world, especially that of the United States, in sharp contrast with the obsolete imperial-power nature of Japan (S.-J. Kim 2006; D. Kim 2009).

Given this positive attitude toward the atomic bomb, it was no wonder that after 1945 a group of smart young Koreans decided to study science and engineering. Moreover, after the Korean War and during the 1950s, nuclear physics and engineering were the only specialties in which Korean scientists and engineers were fully trained, among the Western-based advanced science and engineering fields. That group largely comprised the first generation of expert scientists and engineers of South Korea, and they played an essential role in building the Korean scientific community and its institutions. In 1957, South Korea joined the International Atomic Energy Agency, and in 1958 South Korea’s Atomic Energy Law was passed. Around the same time, South Korea imported the first experimental nuclear reactor (a 100 kW TRIGA Mark-II Model of General Electric from the United States) and established the Atomic Energy Research Institute (AERI). AERI was the first modern research facility in South Korea, and its formation marked the beginning of the Korean nuclear program (DiMoia 2010).

Park Ik Soo, a science historian and science critic, was not in favor of nuclear research. In the long essay published in Dong a ilbo on 7 January 1961, he pointed out that South Korea lacked adequate skilled manpower and experience to build a nuclear reactor and suggested that investing in technical education and meeting private companies’ science and engineering needs were more urgent and desirable than building an experimental nuclear reactor and establishing AERI (Park 1961). In response to this article, Lee Chang Geon, a nuclear researcher at AERI, criticized Park for misunderstanding many aspects of nuclear reactors and nuclear engineering and argued that Korean nuclear engineers were fully trained in the United States by experienced companies, such as General Electric. He added:

No matter who criticizes us, we have confidence. There is a story that a barley seed must be destroyed to bear fruit. We know the harmful effect of excessive radioactivity, which may shorten man’s life, cause deformities, and even affect the next generations. But...