One of South Korea’s top officials has warned that the country developing its own nuclear weapons could spell catastrophe, and called for “peaceful” means of deterring North Korea’s threats of nuclear escalation.
His comments come amid growing domestic calls for nuclear weapons to respond to the heightening concern over Pyongyang’s intentions.
In an interview with Reuters on Thursday morning, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said that the country’s alliance with the U.S. would experience “a huge crack” if Seoul chose to pursue a domestic nuclear arsenal.
Shin added that this would also necessitate South Korea withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
While the NPT provides states a right to withdraw “if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country,” Shin said that such a move would “trigger an immediate shock in our financial market as well as the international one.”