This is the Kator Daily podcast for Monday, May 1st,

2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As South Korea's president wraps up a visit to the White House,

where does that diplomatic relationship stand?

What promises were made with respect to weaponry and the challenges the ROK faces from North

Korea and China?

Kato's Doug Bendau and Eric Gomez comment.

I think in the context of this, you know, this visit, right, and where things are in the relationship, the South Koreans want to have confidence in like this US

extended deterrent commitment, right? The idea that we will use our nukes to protect someone who isn't ourselves.

And the problem with that is, well, the North Koreans have been very busy.

They've been fielding a lot more nuclear weapons, nuclear capable

systems. And so there's this there's been this push in South Korea in the last

few months before this state visit that Eun did to say, well, you know, maybe it's time for South

Korea to consider our own nukes. And so I think going into this meeting, was like how do we tap that down at the lowest possible cost to ourselves?

Yeah, the South Koreans want to be protected.

It's been 70 years since the end of the Korean War. They much

prefer to have a superpower on their side and they want to keep that. And they've got

nervous about that number one as indicated, because of the North Korean

progress on not only nukes but intercontinental missiles, because the moment that they have

an ICBM that can hit, they can actually target American cities,

it puts the US at much greater risk and they worry the US might decide defending them isn't such a good deal.

...