KB News Desk
A newly signed civilian nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia is drawing attention in Seoul as a potential opening for South Korea’s efforts to secure greater authority over uranium enrichment and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.
The agreement, signed Wednesday by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, establishes the legal framework for American companies to supply nuclear reactors, materials, equipment and technology for Saudi Arabia’s planned civilian nuclear power program.
The US Department of Energy described the arrangement as a decadeslong, multibillion-dollar partnership intended to advance economic, strategic and nuclear nonproliferation objectives. The two sides signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, commonly known as a Section 123 agreement, as well as a separate bilateral safeguards agreement.
For South Korea, the agreement is being closely watched for indications that Washington may be willing to adopt a more flexible approach toward trusted partners seeking greater control over the nuclear fuel cycle.
“We have been closely following the agreement because, while it may not have direct implications for South Korea, it could still carry indirect significance,” national security adviser Wi Sung-lac said at a briefing Wednesday.
A Foreign Ministry official echoed that view Thursday, saying Seoul would “continue to closely monitor developments in US nuclear cooperation policy, as they could have implications for South Korea-US cooperation.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity during a closed-door briefing.
Seoul has been seeking expanded civilian authority to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel, citing the need to stabilize its nuclear fuel supply, improve the competitiveness of its nuclear industry and address mounting storage constraints for spent fuel.
“If media reports accurately reflect the contents of the agreement — much of which remains classified and has yet to be made public — South Korea has effectively overcome one of the biggest obstacles,” said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University.
“The US State Department and Department of Energy have traditionally maintained a very strict position on uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. If they are prepared to allow Saudi Arabia greater flexibility, the prospects for progress in negotiations with South Korea also improve.”
Park said the agreement could indicate that officials in Washington who had long resisted exceptions to the gold standard were becoming more receptive to flexible arrangements.
“Given South Korea’s close cooperation with the United States on small modular reactors and North Korea-related issues, there could increasingly be a perception in Washington that if Saudi Arabia is granted greater flexibility, there is little reason Seoul should not receive similar consideration,” he said.
Yu Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, said that if the US Congress allows the US-Saudi agreement to take effect while imposing stringent nonproliferation safeguards, oversight and fuel take-back requirements, Washington could seek to apply similar standards in future negotiations with Seoul.
At the same time, experts nevertheless cautioned against treating the US-Saudi agreement as a direct precedent for South Korea.
Nam Sung-wook, chair professor at Sookmyung Women’s University and former head of the Institute for National Security Strategy, cautioned that South Korea’s circumstances differ markedly from those of Saudi Arabia.
“While the 2015 revision of the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement allowed limited technical progress on issues such as low-enriched uranium, Washington still views Seoul as a country with latent nuclear weapons potential, making further negotiations politically sensitive,” he said.
As a result, discussions on Seoul’s long-standing requests, including civilian uranium enrichment, spent fuel reprocessing and nuclear-powered submarines, have made little concrete progress despite recent security consultations, Nam further explained. He contended that, as in the Saudi case, any breakthrough would likely require a political decision by the US president rather than technical negotiations at the working level.
Several experts say that the Saudi deal was negotiated against the particular backdrop of Washington’s strategy toward Iran, efforts to reshape the Middle Eastern security order and competition with China and Russia. Its final implementation may also depend on Saudi-Israeli normalization, making it fundamentally different from the South Korea-US alliance context.
There is also disagreement over whether the deal represents a genuine loosening of US nonproliferation policy.
The White House said in a joint fact sheet issued after an October 2025 summit between Trump and President Lee Jae Myung that the US supported a process leading to South Korea’s civilian uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing for peaceful purposes, subject to US law and the bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement.
The two countries subsequently launched nuclear cooperation consultations and held their first formal round of talks in Seoul in early June. The discussions addressed civilian enrichment and reprocessing as well as cooperation on nuclear-powered submarines, although US officials have treated the civilian and military components as legally distinct matters.
The current South Korea-US nuclear cooperation agreement, revised in 2015, does not give Seoul standing consent to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel. Such activities generally require consultations and written US approval.
Seoul is expected to continue emphasizing nuclear fuel supply stability, spent fuel management and the competitiveness of its civilian nuclear industry in negotiations with Washington, while addressing North Korea’s nuclear threat separately through the South Korea-US extended deterrence framework.
For the moment, because the full text of the US-Saudi agreement has not been released, uncertainty remains over whether the agreement could eventually allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium domestically — a capability that Riyadh has long sought but which Washington has traditionally restricted because of proliferation concerns.
