The South Korean government announced plans to launch its first nuclear-powered submarine by the mid-2030s and deploy it to the Navy in the late 2030s.
Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back reported the "Basic Plan for the Development of the Republic of Korea's Nuclear-Powered Submarine" at the inaugural Future Defense Strategy Committee meeting held Wednesday at the Navy Submarine Force Command in Jinhae, South Gyeongsang Province. President Lee Jae-myung also attended the meeting.
"We will pursue the project with the goal of launching the first nuclear-powered submarine in the mid-2030s," Ahn said, adding that the government plans to bring the submarine into operational service after the late 2030s. The submarine's nuclear reactor will use low-enriched uranium with enrichment levels below 20%, and will be developed for "long-cycle" operation to minimize fuel replacement, he noted. The government also emphasized that it will transparently and firmly fulfill its nuclear nonproliferation obligations throughout the introduction of the nuclear-powered submarine.
"We will develop and build the nuclear-powered submarine within the Republic of Korea," Ahn said. "We will build it autonomously using our own reactor and shipbuilding technologies." Domestic construction of the nuclear submarine has been the government's consistent position since the South Korea-U.S. summit in October last year, when the two countries agreed on the submarine's construction.
The nuclear-powered submarine has been a long-standing aspiration of the South Korean military, with the need for its introduction first raised under the Kim Young-sam administration. The naming of the "Jangbogo N Project" signifies that the nuclear submarine program, which had repeatedly been pursued as a long-term classified national project only to be shelved, has now been formalized in the open.
The Defense Ministry explained that the name reflects the intent to build "a next-generation model that inherits the spirit of the Jangbogo, the Republic of Korea's first submarine, applying nuclear-powered propulsion and integrating neo technology."
The government secured the Trump administration's support for South Korea's construction of a nuclear-powered submarine at the South Korea-U.S. summit held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju in October last year. Since then, the basic plan for nuclear submarine development has been prepared over seven months through consultations among relevant government agencies.
