Yekang Ko, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley, and Derek K. Schubert, a Landscape Architect at John Northmore Roberts & Associates and President of SAVE International, respond to “Case Study of Green Economy Policies: Korea” by Sun-Jin Yun and Myungrae Cho (Nautilus Institute Special Report, September 13, 2011). Yun and Cho argue that the center of South Korea’s Green Growth clearly favors economic growth, national industrial competitiveness, and an energy portfolio emphasizing nuclear power, but puts little effort toward promoting energy democracy and justice for decentralized renewable energy systems and local communities. As a complementary study to Yun and Cho’s report, the authors introduce a fierce controversy between large-scale tidal power and the local efforts toward preserving wetlands and fisheries in Incheon, South Korea.

Anthony J. Colangelo, Assistant Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law, states that in light of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540, the main legal obstacles to establishing extraterritorial and, ultimately, “universal” jurisdiction over dual use nuclear commodities smuggling boil down to a problem of legality. Colangelo shows that the concept of geographic legality offers a useful lens through which to examine the potential for extraterritorial jurisdiction over smuggling of dual use nuclear items. This report frames the major legal obstacles to establishing such jurisdiction, and, as a result, also reveals mechanisms for surmounting or breaking down those obstacles. Specifically, it clarifies the roles of national law, positive international law (treaties), and customary international law, along with key sovereignty and individual rights components, to establishing expansive and ultimately universal jurisdiction over dual use nuclear commodities smuggling anywhere in the world.

Daniel H. Joyner, Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law, argues that nuclear materials and commodities smuggling is currently established in customary international law (CIL) as an international crime, but that that crime is limited in its effectiveness by its imprecise definition and its lack of an accompanying right of universal jurisdiction over the offense. He states that “a multilateral treaty further recognizing this crime and clarifying its criteria and scope and the universality of state jurisdiction over it, would be useful in addressing the limitations of a CIL-based crime, and would create a treaty-CIL mutually reinforcing relationship of a type seen in other substantive areas of international law”.