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The move toward "nuclear sovereignty" comes as President Lee Myung-bak is set to hold summit talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, which are most likely to be dominated by the North Korean issue.
Lee left for Washington on Monday for his first full-fledged meeting with Obama, in which the two leaders are expected to discuss ways to shield South Korea from its communist neighbor’s nuclear threats.
A group of ruling lawmakers have called for Lee to use Tuesday's summit to get the right to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, saying this is necessary to boost self-defense and ensure a stable supply of electricity.
The Grand National Party's policy committee said it had proposed that the government raise the issue of nuclear sovereignty at the summit in Washington.
"Peaceful use of nuclear energy is a sovereign right, but South Korea has renounced it," Rep. Choi Ku-sik told a press conference. "It is high time for South Korea to gain the right to process nuclear material as desired," he said, noting that North Korea had conducted nuclear tests and Japan has been reprocessing nuclear materials.
There are no binding international rules that ban the enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear materials for peaceful purposes. However South Korea, under a 1974 accord with the United States, pledged to get U.S. permission before engaging in nuclear activities.
The agreement came after former military strongman Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country from 1961 to 1979 on a staunch anti-communist platform, pursued nuclear weapons to deter the threat from the North, which angered the United States.
South Korea declared itself nuclear free again in 1992 under an agreement with North Korea, which stated that "the South and the North shall not possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities."
But the North has already violated the accord by conducting nuclear weapons tests in 2006 and again this year. On Saturday, the North said it had restarted its plutonium-producing nuclear facility in Yongbyon and vowed to weaponize all the plutonium it has.
The North also said it will begin a uranium enrichment program to produce weapons, in response to the U.N. Security Council's Resolution 1874, which calls for tougher cargo inspections, a tighter arms embargo and stronger financial sanctions to punish Pyongyang for its nuclear test last month.
But South Korea has "been limited even in peaceful nuclear activities or uses of atomic energy that are widely recognized by the international community," Rep. Chung Ok-nim of the GNP said. "Our hands are tied, with threats from the North ever mounting," she said.
Some hard-line lawmakers even called for South Korea to develop its own nuclear weapons to counter the threat from the North. "Possession of our own nuclear weapons is the most effective way for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons," said Rep. Kim Dong-sung of the GNP.
Park Sun-young, a lawmaker of the conservative opposition Liberty Forward Party, also said it is time for South Korea to develop nuclear weapons for self-defense against North Korea. Park has held forums on "nuclear sovereignty" to build public opinion.
The lawmakers said South Korea cannot even produce mildly enriched uranium, a key fuel for running atomic energy plants, even though it is running 20 nuclear power plants across the country. It imports all its nuclear fuel.
Some 40 percent of South Korea's electricity comes from atomic energy, but the country can't complete the so-called "nuclear fuel cycle” – from securing nuclear fuel to reprocessing using domestically produced materials – without relying on foreign sources.
The Seoul government has so far dismissed the calls for nuclear sovereignty. "It is inappropriate to raise the issue of nuclear sovereignty," Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told Parliament. Unification Minister Hyun In-taek also said the government has no plan to raise the nuclear sovereignty issue in talks with the United States.
The reprocessing of nuclear materials is a very sensitive issue for the United States. In 2004, South Korea admitted that its scientists had secretly extracted a minute amount of plutonium in 1982 and carried out an experiment to enrich uranium in 2000. Plutonium and enriched uranium are the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
The Seoul government said the tests were on too small a scale to be significant and has blamed curious scientists for conducting experiments without official authorization, denying that the government harbored ambitions to build nuclear weapons.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog expressed "serious concern" about South Korea's activities and sent teams of inspectors to probe its past nuclear experiments.
Seoul's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, now U.N. secretary general, declared that South Korea had "no intention of developing or possessing nuclear weapons" and promised to “pursue scientific atomic research transparently in cooperation” with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
South Korea is one of over 40 countries that could produce nuclear weapons but have remained non-nuclear.
