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Michael Hamel-Green of Victoria University and Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute argue that a “Korean NWFZ may be a necessary condition to achieving the full denuclearization of Korea”. As well as providing “benefits to the United States in preventing a major direct and wider proliferation threat from North Korea, and to China, Japan and South Korea in maintaining stability in the Northeast Asian Region, it would also serve to address North Korean security concerns about potential US nuclear strikes”. They point out that “the two Koreas have already negotiated a legal basis for a Korean Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the form of the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korea Peninsula.” This could form the basis of a NWFZ covering the peninsula. Alternately, they suggest, the ROK and Japan could create a Japan Korea NWFZ via a bilateral treaty.

Peter Hayes, Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute, analyses developments in the system of United States nuclear hegemony in East Asia deriving from North Korea’s drive for nuclear weapons. Hayes argues that “the nuclear threat projected by the US in this hegemonic system drove the DPRK to adopt a nuclear weapons proliferation strategy that was aimed at compelling the United States to change its policies towards the DPRK. The latter’s successful nuclear breakout demonstrates that today, the hegemon has no clothes, that is, it is not capable of stopping nuclear breakout by a key adversary.” Arguing that the reinforcing of guarantees of extended nuclear deterrence will be unsuccessful and “will lead to eventual nuclear proliferation by the allies themselves”, Hayes concludes that only conventional deterrence “is likely to curb the DPRK’s nuclear threat, head off long-run proliferation by the ROK and Japan, and by realigning its legitimating ideology (“Global Abolition”) with alliance institutions and force structures, restore the now rapidly dwindling US hegemony in the region.”