The November 2025 U.S.-South Korea Joint Fact Sheet opened the door to renewed discussions on South Korea’s civil uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing and closer strategic alignment on cyberspace policies and cooperation, expanding the traditional areas of alliance cooperation to encompass civil nuclear energy and cyberspace.

The Lee Jae Myung administration plans to construct additional reactors at home and abroad, and its forthcoming cybersecurity strategy is expected to reaffirm the country’s ambitions as an “AI powerhouse” in the cyber domain and tighten regulations on the private sector. Potential misalignment on scope and policy direction risks slowing momentum and creating new points of contention.

Join KEI for a discussion on opportunities and challenges facing growing nuclear and cyber cooperation between the United States and South Korea. The research presented here will appear in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of Korea Policy, KEI’s flagship academic journal.

Participants

Kayla Orta | Indo-Pacific Fellow, Atlantic Council

George Sebastian Garcia | Program Officer, KEI

Ellen Kim (Moderator) | Senior Fellow and Director of Academic Programs, KEI

Full Transcript

Redefining the U.S.-ROK Partnership on Nuclear Technologies and Cybersecurity
May 12, 2026

Ellen Kim: My name is Ellen Kim. I’m a senior fellow and the director of academic programs here at KEI. Thanks for joining us today. U.S.-ROK cooperation on civil nuclear energy and cybersecurity have become an important agenda and an important priority for the Trump and the Lee Jae Myung administrations. The U.S.-ROK Joint Fact Sheet released last year indicated U.S. support for “the process that will lead to the ROK’s civil uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing for peaceful use,” in accordance with the existing bilateral agreement and then U.S. legal requirements. So this has renewed the discussion around the U.S.-ROK Civil Nuclear Cooperation Framework, also known as the 123 Agreement, that was renegotiated back in 2015. Two countries have also recently agreed to expand cooperation on cyberspace in response to North Korea’s growing cyber and cryptocurrency-related threats. The rapid rise of AI is also increasing cyber risks and also making the protection of critical infrastructure like nuclear facility energy systems very important as these systems become increasingly digitalized. The increasing use of AI is also driving global demand for electricity and
making civil nuclear energy as a critical component of many countries’ energy security strategy.
So today we would like to take this opportunity to examine each of these issues in depth with two speakers who have been closely tracking the developments in each of these issues.

So let me properly introduce them. First, on my left is Kayla Orta. She is an Indo-Pacific Security Fellow with the Atlantic Council. She also holds non-resident fellowship at the George Washington University’s Institute for Korean Studies and the University of Vienna’s European Center for North Korean Studies. Previously, she was a senior associate at the Wilson Center’s Hyundai Motor Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy. As a foreign policy analyst, Kayla has published widely on U.S.-Korea diplomatic, economic, and security partnership across a diversity of advanced technologies, including nuclear deterrence, AI, civil nuclear energy, nonproliferation, and safeguards. She holds an MA in International Studies with the highest honor from Seoul National University’s Graduate School of International Studies. She obtained her dual BA in International Studies and Foreign Languages, magna cum laude, from Miami University.

On her left is George Sebastian Garcia. Sebastian is a program officer at KEI, where he conducts research on cyber and space security and has been writing extensively on U.S.-ROK cybersecurity defense and commercial cooperation. Prior to joining KEI, Sebastian was a staff intern for the Hyundai Motor–Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy (Wilson Center), where you two work together apparently. And Sebastian also worked as an editorial assistant for Georgetown University Press. He holds a Bachelor of Science in International Policy with a minor in Korean from Georgetown University, and also a Master of Science in Foreign Service with a certificate in Asian Studies from Georgetown University—sorry, this is a morning.

So Kayla and Sebastian, thank you very much for joining us today. Before we dive into the
conversation, I’d like to give both of you a chance to start with opening remarks. Kayla, the floor is yours.

Kayla Orta: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Ellen, for the kind introductions and the very kind in-depth introductions. I think you’ve also done such a great job laying out where our conversation is going to go, and I know we’ll have a chance to talk more specifically about U.S. and South Korea civil nuclear cooperation, as well as cyber.

For the opening, I find it’s very helpful to do a bit of a scene-setter, especially thinking about
the geopolitical and global trends in this sector as we move deeper into the U.S. and South Korea relations. To start, I’m going to highlight what I’m terming as four geopolitical trends particularly in this sector that I am watching closely and many in the field are and we’ll take it from there.

So the first, I think you already mentioned, is the rising global demand for nuclear energy. Very
recently, the IEA forecasted that global nuclear capacity could expand to upwards of 992 gigawatts by 2050. This would be roughly a 2.6x increase on the 2024 levels. These rising global energy demands are driven in part by the acceleration of energy-intensive technologies, such as artificial intelligence and the data centers used to fuel them. But it is interesting how this is accelerating the development and deployment of civil nuclear around the world, and in some countries, particularly at scale, which is very important. This is also helping to fuel investments, and we can look this both in the financial context and but also in the political context, particularly in nuclear innovation, supply chain resiliency, and fuel type diversification.

The second trend we’re watching quite closely is the geopolitical positioning of what you can term as “new nuclear.” When we think of new nuclear, this does not necessarily mean the cool things such as SMRs and MMRs—small modular reactors and microreactors—but this could also be large-scale reactors, traditional formats. And where these types of new construction and buildout are happening is very interesting. Looking toward the future, the geographic center of gravity for new nuclear developments is shifting, and in particular, it is shifting toward the Indo-Pacific. With over a dozen nuclear reactors under construction, I think I checked and it was at the end of last year about 40 new reactors in China under construction. I think we’re now down to 38, meaning that some reactors have already come online. China is set to surpass the United States in total nuclear capacity by 2030. They will be overtaking if we do not add more to our capacity here in the U.S. And additionally, despite efforts by the U.S. and Europe to move away from Russian-supplied uranium, Moscow still leads in global nuclear export projects, with Rosatom announcing at least 48 new nuclear-related facility projects, including multiple export deals across six countries. So we’re seeing the shift into other regions and thinking about that rapid development platforms in the future and that’s not necessarily in the traditional spaces we’ve seen before.

The third point would be that the global nuclear market is definitely becoming more competitive.
We’re seeing a diversification of suppliers, and many of these suppliers are increasingly looking
to secure international export contracts, and in particular as a means of shaping both
regulatory norms in these regions but also as a way of expanding geopolitical influence. Obviously, we can talk about Russia and China in this context. The U.S. is very much feeling the pressure of wanting to maintain its global leadership, and it will require the support and cooperation of its allies in this space.

And then last, the fourth point would be the technical advancement of nuclear. I don’t think I have to tell this room, but obviously AI and the nexus of nuclear is going to be very important. These types of technical innovations, particularly in diversification of reactor types, are reshaping the nuclear sector as a whole when we think about future coming. Advanced reactors, SMRs, small module reactors, offer the potential for greater flexibility, lower upfront cost, and enhanced safety features compared to traditional large-scale reactors.
Additionally, the AI-nuclear nexus—and I’ve talked about this before, and hopefully we’ll get into
it a little bit as well—means that not only will nuclear fuel power AI, but that it will be likely
that AI will help bring the nuclear sector into the 21st century. We think about digitization,
visual learning models, and we can also talk about the future of SMRs and digital twins when we think about reactor designs—no longer just having a visualization of models, but having real-time data fed into a system as well.

So as a whole, I think these trends are pointing to a very clear indication that the future of
nuclear is going to be quite dynamic, and increasingly it’s also going to be quite competitive. And to wrap up and place this back in the context of U.S. and South Korean relations, these changes and shifts in dynamics in the global space are going to provide very time-sensitive but also encouraging opportunities for the partnership.

And this partnership on nuclear isn’t just recent. This is a seven-decades-long partnership founded in the initial agreement in 1956. And in many ways, that partnership is no longer just a one-way assistance program. It’s more balanced, very structured, but also has a lot more opportunity to build upon for the partnerships as well. So in some ways, I think right now is a critical moment for careful reconsideration of what that partnership in civil nuclear energy means, especially as we recognize that South Korea is not just receiving, but also distributing internationally and growing its own industry locally.

Ellen Kim: Excellent. Thank you. Sebastian?

Sebastian Garcia: Well, thank you so much for a very warm introduction, Ellen. Very happy to be up on stage talking with Kayla today about some really important issues.

And likewise, I just want to ground this conversation—when we think about the U.S.-South Korea commitment to cyber coordination that came out of the Joint Fact Sheet—grounding it in a North Korean cyber threat that has increasingly intensified and multiplied year over year. Case in point, last year we saw North Korean hackers pull off the largest-ever cryptocurrency theft
on record, stealing north of $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange. And that’s followed a trend of
the past 10 years of North Korea funneling billions of dollars into the regime’s coffers through
cryptocurrency theft and theft from online banks as well. Tie into that other avenues of attacks
such as very sophisticated IT worker scams, where with accomplices in the United States, North
Koreans are acquiring information to fraudulently pose as other people online and get remote IT
work at sometimes Fortune 500 companies—again, further generating revenue and also getting into corporate networks and stealing sensitive information.

What I want to make really clear is that this is not an ancillary issue to some of the other
security threats and challenges we see from North Korea. The UN Panel of Experts, when it was operating, reported that an estimate of 40% of North Korea’s ballistic missile program and nuclear weapons program budget was being financed through these illicit cybercriminal means. So this is an integral part of North Korea’s national security strategy and its approach toward hybrid warfare and having an asymmetric advantage against the United States and South Korea.

So that is the threat we face in 2026, just as both governments are now undergoing a massive
revision of their cybersecurity strategies. We’ve yet to see South Korea’s, but the Trump
administration—the White House National Cyber Plan for America—is out. And I did write on this a couple months ago for the KEI blog, as a subtle plug.

Essentially what we see from that strategy is some continuity of the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy documents that have also been put out. Most strikingly, the omission of North Korea—and in the Cybersecurity Strategy, no state actor is explicitly identified as a cyber threat—which in some ways is surprising, but in some ways not given the Trump administration’s prior attempts to engage with North Korea and not explicitly ratchet up the rhetoric when they’re trying to diplomatically engage.

But it does raise questions for South Korea and their revision, as their 2024 strategy published by the Yoon Seok-yeol administration very explicitly was directed toward deterring North Korea cyber threats, identifying North Korea as the primary threat to South Korea, and adopting a lot of the U.S.’s offensive posture in cyberspace—trying to learn from the U.S. as an example to identify and neutralize Korean hacker groups before they attacked, taking the fight to them.

And so in that strategic conversation, there’s a lot of opportunities and pitfalls, especially
tying it back to these energy and technology cooperation issues as well, where reports from the Lee Jae-myung administration see their cyber strategy as focused on creating an environment to innovate with AI and become a leading AI power, and utilize tools there to boost their cyber defense capability. That would be a great alignment with the United States in their goal and their strategy to unleash AI innovation and kind of deregulate.

But at the same time, a string of recent data breaches at major South Korean companies has raised concerns that the South Korean government’s cyber response and their framework for corporate cyber governance is not up to standard and they would like to see stronger regulation. So that could be a potential point of friction as well.

So really just taking into account the opportunities and pitfalls and trying to figure out: how can
we strategically align U.S. and South Korean cyber strategy? Those are some of the things I want to get into in our discussion today.

Ellen Kim: Thank you. I’ll go back to some of the points raised, but maybe I will start with Kayla.

So basically, the 123 Agreement was negotiated a decade ago, but it’s back. And I want to unpack this a little bit, as the two countries are starting to begin working-level discussion on this
issue. What are the critical issues on the enrichment side and the reprocessing side that would
have to be addressed? That’s my first question. And what sort of process or the players do you think will be part of the negotiation going forward?

Kayla Orta: Excellent questions, and I think we’re starting with the big topics up front when it comes to this conversation.

So yes—the 123 Agreement that currently exists between the U.S. and South Korea was officially agreed upon in 2015. We’re a little past the halfway marker at this point. It will go into 2035, with the possibility of an extension for five years up to 2040, potentially.

What is interesting is that the previous round of negotiations took years. This was the hard work
of many on both the U.S. and the South Korean side to try to find a diplomatic consensus that took into consideration both the vision and the potential for growth in the industry, but also some of the larger concerns around proliferation, so we’ll start there.

So in some ways it is back, but it’s also consistent. So I want to go back to the Joint Fact Sheet. I think this is where a lot of people are starting from in paying attention to this topic again and having it come back up in the news. What’s really interesting about the wording—in particular, of course, diplomatic statements are going to be balancing different issues and different topics—but this is particularly successful in how it is worded in the sense that if you read it from a more Washington-focused lens, we haven’t promised anything new. It’s saying that the U.S. will continue to support the potential pursuit of enrichment and reprocessing. Whereas if you read it from a Seoul perspective, it can feel either like a renegotiation opportunity or just a recommitment to the initial goals that were established in the 2015 agreement.

So there’s a couple ways we can interpret this, but it has sparked a lot of conversation. I think
there’s a lot of curiosity on the topic. And of course, there are ongoing negotiations that are
happening behind closed doors as well.

So when we think about the main issues—the points of concern—the point really is going to be
around: how do the U.S. and South Korea collaborate in an industry that is both sensitive and at
times highly competitive? And that was the purpose, the foundation of it.

When I talk about sensitive, I’m talking about sensitive technology. You mentioned enrichment and reprocessing. So I can give maybe a little bit of understanding. On the enrichment side, both of these are proliferation-sensitive because these are pathways that a
country can pursue to be able to obtain a nuclear bomb. When it comes to enrichment, it’s a certain level of enrichment. Usually, low-enriched uranium for most traditional reactors is going to be less than 5%. You can have some conversations around HALEU up to 20%. But when you start talking about actual weapons-grade fissile material that the IAEA tracks and monitors because of the potential proliferation risk, that’s going to be up into the 80%, 90% enrichment level. So there’s a big difference. But the technology pathways that are used to get you to certain lower levels of enrichment—the concerning factor is that that can also be used to get to the higher levels. So that’s a proliferation risk there.

On the reprocessing side, you have a different type of technology. And I think there’s a lot of
conversation around spent fuel. Part of the biggest concern is the ability to separate out
plutonium, and using plutonium then to be able to pursue nuclear weapons. So these are the different tracks. Of course, there are a lot of other things that feed into a country being able to pursue nuclear weapons—missile programs, the ability to do different types of explosives that would be necessary for inclusion of the weapon—but the biggest concerns are that these are early pathways that can be either an indicator of a country moving one direction or another.

So because of this, and because of the U.S. and international focus on nonproliferation, these
technologies are very sensitive. So on the critical issue side, the question comes down to: where in the U.S.-South Korea partnership do they stand on these technologies? The original 2015 agreement was a renegotiation based off the 1970 agreement, which was different,
based off the 1960s, based off the 1950s. So there’s a long trajectory in history that has led up
to the current point. And there was an attempt at the time to envision a future where South Korea could pursue these types of technologies.

The way the agreement is written, it is not with prior U.S. approval. When South Korea negotiated the 1970s agreement, they waived access to the continuation or development of enrichment and reprocessing locally in Korea in 2015. That agreement said there will be new pathways to explore how to pursue either enrichment or reprocessing. And there were certain steps that were intended to take place—certain avenues for conversation and discussion that were supposed to happen. And in some ways, a lot of that has lagged behind the schedule that was predicted.

So there could be a sense that this has not progressed as far if we’re looking into how we open up the door for Korea to pursue these technologies. There were certain mile points and milestones along the way. Have we reached those? Have we not? And what does the next look like down the road?

So you do have a lot of conversation around nonproliferation on this topic, but also South Korea is one of the best examples of abiding by international nonproliferation rules, regulations, and laws. They have a great partnership with the IAEA, and they have a great partnership with the U.S., so there’s some interesting conversation there.

And I do realize I’ve been talking for a while, but I think you hit the heavy points up front, so I
wanted to give it the respect it deserves. And you had talked a little bit about what should the process be and the types of players that should be involved. In many ways, the partnership has benefited from active presidential-level engagement on the topic, right? This goes back to previous administrations that have made statements at diplomatic summits that include talking about civil nuclear cooperation.

We have the high-level government side of it. Where can we strengthen potentially the
agency-to-ministry level? The High-Level Bilateral Commission—the HLBC—was meant to be a pathway for that, to be able to bring issues and have conversations on four key areas that covered the gamut, the full docket of potential work on civil nuclear. A lot of that has halted. There might be some negotiating for restarting, maybe under a different platform and under a different name. But we really need to have the individuals who enact the policy domestically—who are shaping and leading that—doing a lot of the on-the-ground, upfront work involved. That includes agency/ministry, but also there’s some argument for public-private partnerships as well.

Some of the biggest issue areas for the U.S. and South Korea, unfortunately, have been clashes on the private side. And we have to remember that even though we’re framing this in a larger diplomatic conversation, at the end of the day you need buy-in from industry to be able to see where there are opportunities for partnership—where in the supply chain Korea can be useful, but also where they can benefit from the knowledge gained from the U.S. side as well.

Ellen Kim: So let me complicate this picture a little bit by bringing in another component, which is the nuclear-powered submarine. From your perspective, how does this element affect the broader U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation? And looking at what pathway options does South Korea realistically have?

Kayla Orta: This is the interesting question, right?

And I think this is why people feel that there’s a shift, because we just saw in the Joint Fact
Sheet, you had a very interesting commingling of two points that are normally kept very separate.

When you’re talking civil nuclear, that’s why we call it civil nuclear—it is on the civil side, it
is not on the military side. And to have in a joint statement, in one section, including both a
conversation about nuclear energy development on these, you could argue, proliferation-risk topics, and a conversation on nuclear submarines—which from the U.S. perspective, and from a lot of the countries the U.S. collaborates with, would require highly enriched uranium—what’s fascinating here is you had a Trump announcement saying that they approved of South Korea developing nuclear-powered submarines, so SSNs. And a lot of questions come out of: what does that mean?

So far, we haven’t heard of an AUKUS-style or however people are envisioning having Korea involved in this perspective. We’re not hearing a partnership like that. We’re hearing a more top-level: yes, we can figure it out.

But South Korea is in a very unique but also difficult position because they’re not being pulled
into a larger technology cooperation on this. And South Korea has already in place legal frameworks, including in the 123 Agreement, that say any technology or material gained from the U.S. through the 123 Agreement cannot be used for military means. That is in the clause there.

So they can’t take whatever fissile materials—let’s say it’s the low-enriched uranium they’re
receiving from the U.S., because South Korea imports all of its low-enriched uranium from a variety of suppliers, but the U.S. is high among them—they cannot be turning that into this topic.

And South Korea, I think in many ways, even after the conversations, won’t going to pursue
nuclear-powered submarines that were fueled by HEU. So the question then becomes: how do they develop the technology? Where do they develop the technology? And what’s going to feed it?

One of the best examples potentially would be France—looking at how France developed their
nuclear-powered submarines. They’re one of the unique countries in the world that developed
specifically based on LEU. There’s some conversation: is this counterintuitive? Because the whole point of a nuclear-powered submarine is it doesn’t have to refuel and restock, right? The whole point is that you can have it out for long missions and not have to disclose where the location is—that it’s always available and able to respond. So having to do low-enriched uranium, you’re kind of cutting out maybe the benefit of a nuclear-powered attack submarine.

But if South Korea is going to pursue this in a form that is internationally collaborative but also
in a sense independent, then a low-enriched powered nuclear submarine, potentially such as the Barracuda-class models that France has developed, that would be something that they can explore.

Ellen Kim: I have two more questions, but let me take this to the current developments in the Middle East, and then there’s a U.S. and Saudi Arabia deal that was reached last year. We don’t have a lot of details yet on that, but what impact do these ongoing developments in the Middle East and this Saudi deal affect the U.S.-Korea potential cooperation negotiations?

Kayla Orta: That’s an excellent question. And I think those who don’t do nuclear might be saying: what does Saudi have to do with South Korea? What does partnership in the Middle East have to do with partnership in the Indo-Pacific?

It really boils down to what has traditionally been termed since the early 2000s as the U.S. “gold
standard” when it designs and implements a 123 Agreement with another country. And the gold standard is when a country decides, based on the partnership with the U.S., that they will waive the pursuit indigenously of enrichment technology and reprocessing technology.

So the UAE did this in its initial 123 Agreement with the U.S. That led eventually to South Korea
winning the partnership bid and building the Barakah nuclear power plant. So this already exists in the Middle East context.

What is interesting here for the Saudi conversation is there is talk that they will not waive this agreement. They will not say that they will not develop enrichment technology, but rather there’s a conversation that there would be a specialized partnership agreement with the U.S. about
nonproliferation responsibilities. That would be bilateral. And then later that would feed into a
broader partnership with the IAEA that would involve comprehensive safeguards.

So comprehensive safeguards—INFCIRC/153 is the original format for this—that the IAEA does a partnership with every country, and that helps them make sure that a country is not intentionally diverting material for nuclear weapons programs.

In the ’90s and early 2000s—we can talk about North Korea and a couple of countries that still end up pursuing nuclear programs—there was a reshuffling of how the IAEA perceived this process, and that’s where you have the Additional Protocol. The Additional Protocol is a more comprehensive way of checking: it’s not just checking off a list of facilities, but asking questions, doing site visits, being able to go see other parts of a nuclear infrastructure or supply chain if there are concerns. My understanding is that Saudi Arabia has not agreed to an Additional Protocol with the IAEA, and so there is an interesting question about where the future is here. It’s also a very contentious region.

So for South Korea, this will be fascinating. If the United States waives the gold standard for one
country that’s in a contentious region, that has already stated publicly that it would pursue
nuclear weapons if it needs to—which is interesting—and South Korea has stated they will not be pursuing, but South Korea had waived it previously—what does that mean for negotiation?

South Korea is a very close partner of the U.S., very trusted, very close alliance. So this is a
big question. Seoul is watching, and we’re going to have to wait to see. Obviously, this is not
concluded. It has not gone to Capitol Hill for review and conclusion.

Ellen Kim: That’s something that I think a lot of people are watching too. So my last question before we turn to Sebastian on cybersecurity: South Korea has increased to become a major player in the civil nuclear energy export market. What do you think the ideal future U.S.-South Korea nuclear partnership should look like commercially, strategically, and technologically?

Kayla Orta: The biggest question for last.

I think it’s a little tricky to think about how this will take shape ideally. That’s tricky because
you’re bringing two nations with different national security imperatives together, right? You’re
also bringing two industries with different goals and achievements and focus. And I did bring up
that there are opportunities for collaboration, but let’s be honest: there’s also competition.
There’s limited area and space for market development and for countries to pursue—especially new emerging countries on nuclear, or even returning to expand further. So in some ways, the U.S. and Korea’s industries have competition and also opportunities for collaboration.

Strategically, I think the best thing would be, in many ways I believe, Washington is recognizing that on the front of global leadership for nuclear energy and nonproliferation, if they do not keep up partnerships and expand further, we will fall behind and China will take the lead in this context. And the only way we can really pursue that, especially because our industry has lagged in recent decades, is to look to our partners. Doosan Energy provided the steam generators for our most recent reactor build, so we’re already working with Korea. So how can the supply chains work more collaboratively? Strategically, we need to recognize—and I did write a piece on this—that AI infrastructure will need nuclear, but also need allied cooperation, because the U.S. will increasingly be looking to other countries that are exporters, but also experts in this industry, to be able to build partnerships. And that can go all the way down to the vendor supply-chain dynamic as well.

Commercially, I think there are really good opportunities to play to different strengths. As long
as we’re not getting caught up in who gets the most prestige for the deal, the question should be
that deals are being made and we’re having the opportunity to export collaboratively. I think
there’s a lot more room there to explore to see what’s possible.

Technologically, there are a lot of exciting opportunities here. South Korea is one of the countries developing SMR technology. The U.S. obviously has, I think at this point, something like 90-plus SMR reactor designs. The joke is that there’s more reactors on PowerPoints than there are in real life when it comes to SMRs. So these are leading spaces, and there’s already good technological cooperation on either reactor designs or experiments in that space.

There’s more that can be done on fuel diversification. Korea is paying very close attention to the
U.S.’s context around LEU+ and HALEU, making sure that they have access early to some of those collaborations and potential supply chains.

And then also when we think about AI integration, Korea is putting a lot on the table in thinking
about not only building some of the newest reactors in the world, but also how do you integrate
these advancements in technology. How do you have digital twin setups for different types of
reactors? How do you feed real-time information? How do you guarantee you have on-site and off-site operation and management control? And we’re already seeing good partnerships between U.S. and South Korean universities, even looking at test reactors.

And the last thing I’ll say is we don’t often talk about the boring side: decommissioning and
long-term storage of reactor fuel. But both the U.S. and Korea are in a very interesting position
where there’s legislation, but there’s not actual facility development. And so there’s going to be an opportunity to look at: what does the backend look like? What does decommissioning look like? Where are opportunities to collaborate on dry-cask storage, as well as maybe a long-term storage facility? I wanted to add that, because we don’t often talk about.

Ellen Kim: But that’s a very important issue for Korea as these tasks are going to be fulfilled.

Sebastian, over the past decade, North Korea has emerged as a major cyber player and a key actor in cryptocurrency theft. According to a recent estimate, North Korea stole nearly $1.6 billion in cryptocurrency in the first half of 2025, and that accounts for 70% of global cryptocurrency theft during that period. Why is North Korea so good at this? Why is North Korea’s cryptocurrency theft so successful?

Sebastian Garcia: That’s great. Well, it is part of their wider cybersecurity program. That is not something they’re new to. North Korea has been pursuing cyber warfare as a main policy priority for the past 40 years, going back to the mid-1980s when they first opened computer science programs at the elite North Korean universities with academic exchange assistance from Russia. First it was much like the nuclear cooperation: it was Soviet academics who came to teach computer science in North Korea. And then we see with the fall of the Soviet Union, North Korean professors who studied at elite universities in Moscow coming back to then take over.

And not only just in computer science and engineering and information communication technology (ICT), but specifically at what was known as the Mirim College—now I believe they call it the University of Automation—an elite cyber hacking program that focused on a curriculum of exploiting vulnerabilities in macOS, Windows, Linux computer programs, and wargaming strategy, a military component as well. And so that has fostered thousands of hackers who work for North Korean intelligence and military. And we’ve seen stunning progress in their technological accomplishments in this regard.

It started especially in 1999 when Kim Jong-il declared kind of a year of science, really focused
on building software—in part because the sanctions regime meant that they couldn’t import a lot of the latest hardware and computer technology. So they really focused on working with what they had to build software, malware, vulnerabilities in foreign code.

And all of that developed in 2001 into the launching of the Kwangmyong—essentially the firewall. If you think of the Great Firewall of China blocking the internet, North Korea launched a very similar kind of network that keeps the outside world out. It also allowed them to test out exploits on their own firewall, both defensively to make sure that it could not be breached, but also then taking that data and using it to launch cyberattacks abroad.

Where we see cryptocurrency come into play is the mid-2010s, right at the time where tensions were rising, North Korea was testing nuclear weapons, and the multilateral UN sanctions regime was really restricting revenue flows. At the same time, this Bitcoin cryptocurrency market comes onto the scene. It’s a new disruptive technology in the financial sector, but it’s also very vulnerable. And North Korea latched onto that very quickly and shifted a lot of their focus from persistent attacks and cyber espionage toward financial crimes and stealing cryptocurrency. And it turned out to be very lucrative.

Not to say that they also don’t focus on the conventional hybrid warfare approach to cybersecurity still, because we are still seeing near-constant attacks on South Korean and U.S. infrastructure. Incheon National Airport has been a target of many attempted cyberattacks. Just recently, in terms of software supply chains, a couple months ago the report came out that
this program Axios—which is essentially a program that runs through any website where you’re trying to request something from a server; any inquiry you make on a web browser, Axios helps route that—they managed to hack into the accounts for two hours, publish their own malware-infected latest update to Axios, and that program gets 100 million downloads per week. So major, major attack that would have let them install Trojans across thousands of computers in thousands of industries—not just to steal money, but to do significant damage to American computer systems.

So that is something that we really should be concerned about, from protecting our financial health but also from a national security standpoint.

It gets a little difficult because internationally we don’t have an IAEA like we do in the nuclear
sector—a lot of international safeguards and norms around cybersecurity. Cyber warfare, according to international law, is not an act of war. And so there is ongoing debate in the UN and the international community about how self-defense applies when it comes to cyberattacks. It’s a very gray area, and North Korea exploits that gray area to be able to attack the U.S. and South Korea without facing any repercussion, and hiding behind the diplomatic cover of other actors like Russia and China who do not agree to the U.S.-South Korea definition that these should be acts of war.

So one of my primary recommendations is that the U.S. and South Korea should really focus on
developing their talent pipeline—not just for cybersecurity technical experts, but for policy and
legal experts too—and really invest in those diplomatic resources to push their vision of cyber
norms forward so that we can diplomatically constrain North Korea’s actions in this area.

Ellen Kim: Since you mentioned Russia and China, I want to talk about that, especially given North Korea’s tightening relationship with these countries. Are there signs of cooperation between North Korea and Russia, or between North Korea and China, in cyberspace?

Sebastian Garcia: Yeah, so again, historically the relationship has always been there when it comes to cybersecurity: the academic exchange I mentioned with Russia and with China as well; trade in ICT telecommunications. I believe the report is saying that around 60% of North Korea’s internet cables and telecommunications cables were installed there by Russian and Chinese firms, giving them the infrastructure necessary to engage with the outside world. And for decades, China has also allowed North Korean hackers to establish fake Chinese business fronts in China to operate their remote work schemes and pretend to be Chinese remote workers who are actually working for the North Korean government.

As far as what we’ve seen since the 2024 signing of a strategic comprehensive partnership between Russia and North Korea, it is important to note that there are provisions in the agreement itself that talk about tightening ICT and information security cooperation.

As far as the evidence for that, that is something people have been actively watching out for. We
do know that in the two years since the signing of that deal, ransomware attacks against South
Korea have doubled. South Korea used to not even be in the top 10 of countries affected by ransomware attacks, and in 2025 it jumps to number two in the world.

And now the evidence that has been coming out recently does show that there has been increased coordination between North Korean state-sponsored cyber groups and Russian criminal cyber networks—criminal hacker groups that accept payment to conduct ransomware attacks on behalf of someone.

And that’s really concerning because again, when we talk about how we define the rules around cyber warfare, it’s one thing to say states should not conduct cyberattacks. But what happens when the Russian government isn’t directly engaged? They’re simply turning a blind eye to criminal networks, non-state actors within Russia who are helping the North Koreans.

And most recently—though I’m not sure; I know one firm has reported on this, not wholly verified
yet—there have been talks that a Russian state-sponsored hacking group connected to the FSB has been using, in its attacks against Ukraine and in espionage attempts in Western NATO partners, malware that was developed in North Korea originally. And vice versa, that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus have been using servers and malware originally developed and hosted in Russia.

So that would be a very concerning sign that we are seeing an operational alignment of the Russian and North Korean state-sponsored cyber programs. And that would be something where we would really need to focus our attention on coordinating South Korean—not just South Korea-U.S. efforts, but NATO and Europe as well—because Russia has progressively moved in the Ukraine war from direct attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure to espionage against Western allies and even attacks against European capitals’ critical infrastructure to try to disrupt the supply chain of military aid to Ukraine. So this is something that we’ll be keeping an eye on moving forward.

Ellen Kim: I want to go back to the policy responses. How should the U.S. and South Korea deal with those challenges? It seems like things are getting out of control. This cyber theft, especially
cryptocurrency, has become a critical revenue stream for the North Korean regime, which we have been trying to tackle with sanctions, but sanctions are not really effective right now. How should the two countries collaborate on this issue—bilaterally or multilaterally?

Sebastian Garcia: Yeah, for sure. I think the good news is that there’s been a lot of momentum in the past few years. And it’s really a question of where we go from here.

Especially talking multilaterally: with the Camp David summits, since then we’ve seen a
proliferation of bilateral coordination through bilateral cyber working groups; through South Korea joining a lot of cyber defense military exercises hosted by the U.S.; and then also trilaterally with Japan. Most recently last year, the latest iteration of a U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral cyber working group as well.

So that is something where in the past four years or so, cyber issues have been raised to the
highest levels of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. In the military sector, we have defense
coordination, but we also see in terms of law enforcement: intelligence sharing; joint information sharing on attacks that are happening; public awareness campaigns—simply getting the message out there on social media and through other avenues to tell firms, hey, this is the latest North Korean phishing scheme; this is how they operate; please look out for this suspicious behavior. That’s critically important—getting information to people who aren’t as aware of the digital space. So all these efforts have been making progress toward a coordinated response.

And I think touching on where we go from here is these big changes now with the shifts in
government. There’s been a bit of a pause in this coordination because of the Trump
administration’s restructuring of its international cyber agencies. So CISA, the leading U.S. cyber agency, had an international office that has since been disbanded. The State Department had a Bureau of Cyberspace that has now also been reorganized across the rest of the State Department. So it has led to a bit of confusion on who to be talking to and coordinate with when it comes to the United States. As well as cybersecurity assistance funding—which already was very minuscule, a couple hundred million dollars spread across all U.S. grants—has been frozen completely as well.

So I think in this transition, what comes out of it—we see some insight from the Trump security
strategy talking about burden sharing, talking about unleashing the private sector. And I think
when South Korea is thinking of developing its own strategy, those are two points to really lean in on and think about how it’s going to approach its handling of the private sector and how it’s going to further take more responsibility for its cyber defense—and maybe also help allies as well.

Ellen Kim: Before we open up for the Q&A, one last question on AI and the role of the private sector. Public-private partnerships are increasingly critical in cyberspace. What more can be done on that front?

Sebastian Garcia: Yeah, this is kind of the hardest issue to deal with from a policymaking perspective sometimes, because increasingly the private sector is responsible for a lot of our digital infrastructure and a lot of the latest developments in cyber capabilities, especially with the rise of AI. We saw reports of “Claude Mythos” coming out and having to not be publicly released because of the potential disruption it could do in cyberspace.
So there is that national security imperative for the private sector to safeguard this technology
and focus on cybersecurity. But when the government tries to offload all national security responsibility onto the private sector, there’s friction there, because these are private companies operating on a cost-benefit analysis, not necessarily on providing a public good like national security. So roles need to clearly be defined. I think that’s something that South Korea is looking at right now—when it comes to the recent string of data breaches—and trying to more clearly define what is the private sector’s responsibility for safeguarding data, and what is the government’s responsibility for responding to these cyber incidents.

And I think what we do glean from the Trump cybersecurity strategy is less of a focus on a specific checklist of regulations, because it’s not really changing the fundamental culture and logic of the private sector. You’re creating minimum regulation standards that companies will fulfill and check off all the boxes and then not think about it anymore. And these cyberattacks are this ephemeral thing; the minimum regulations you set are going to be out of date by next year, if not in a few months, because of how fast things are evolving. And small and medium enterprises that don’t have a lot of money to spend, especially on the latest cybersecurity technology, are going to be hampered by this overregulated system.

So my main recommendation on this front is based on the Harvard Kennedy Center’s overview of different cybersecurity plans across the world. They really focused on Singapore’s efforts to
create a cyber risk management model in a whole-of-society approach of Singaporian government, academia, and private sector to create a model of calculating risk when it comes to different types of cyberattacks, going through past history of data and saying: this company that didn’t have this specific requirement was attacked in this way and they lost this much money. And using that to create a calculator to more clearly create insurance premiums and promote the adoption of cyber insurance.

This is an area where, because it’s so hard to calculate risk and because corporate leaders aren’t thinking about it, there have been really low adoption rates considering how digitally connected the U.S. and South Korea are. A recent report in the Korea Times said that South Korean cyber insurance premiums made up about 0.04% of the world market—which, given the size of the South Korean economy and the size of its digital economy and digital infrastructure, is concerning. I think it was about $3 million altogether. Thailand was at $6 million. And a country like Singapore, as small as it is, is $39 million off of this cyber risk investment program.

So I think the U.S. and South Korea have a real opportunity to do a similar project—combine the
full brunt of their government, academic, and financial resources into creating a combined
insurance market for cybersecurity. That would protect small and medium enterprises because they’d be able to get financial assistance in terms of ransom payments, operating losses because things were shut down for so long.

It would assist in changing that corporate mindset to actually think about these issues more. It
would help kind of generalize it as well because you don’t have to get into the specifics of what
exact program do you use or have companies disclose their secret sensitive technology of how they’re defending themselves. You can keep it to a very general level. Things match well because we’re both facing the same threat from North Korea and we’re at a similar level of technology where an attack on a hospital in New York is going to look pretty similar to an
attack on a hospital in Seoul. And so that is one area where we can strengthen the public-private partnership without overly burdensome regulation that the Trump administration is concerned about, while also addressing South Korea’s concerns that there’s been too much laxity from the private sector in terms of really treating these matters seriously.

Ellen Kim: A very interesting idea. Don’t leave KEI to start up your own company. We have 10 minutes, so let me open the floor for questions from the audience and the online audience. If you have a question, please raise your hand and identify yourself. I’ll start with Terence here.

Terence Matsuo: Good morning. My name is Terence Matsuo. I’m a non-resident fellow here at KEI as well as a student at the Institute of World Politics. Ms. Orta, I had two questions for you. So one of the things that we kind of didn’t discuss is the Iran War. I was wondering if you could talk about how the Iran War and the impact on petroleum and oil is going to impact U.S.-South Korea cooperation on nuclear power generation, as well as human workforce development. I was working on a paper on nuclear power in Vietnam, and one of the obstacles there has been the lack of trained workers, both in terms of engineers to build the reactors as well as to run and safely process it. So I was wondering if you could talk about what—if the U.S. and South Korea can cooperate not just on the technological side, but also the workforce development side. Thank you.

Ellen Kim: Maybe take a few more questions and then answer the questions. I will take one more question—the gentleman over there.

Garvey McIntosh: Hi, good morning. My name is Garvey McIntosh. I own a company called Axiom Space. This is for Kayla, and this is from a space lens. Prior to that, I spent 20 years at NASA. As you might have heard, the NASA Administrator just mentioned that NASA was going to focus on nuclear technologies for space exploration, both for lunar surface power and also propulsion. And I was just wondering if you thought that given—and then Korea obviously wants to get more involved in space activities, established a space agency just a couple years ago, the Korean Space Agency—if you thought space nuclear technologies might be a way that, given the sensitivities on the industry side and also the technology side and sort of security side, nuclear technology might be an area they could work together for future space exploration.

Ellen Kim: Excellent. Excellent. Do we want—.

Kayla Orta: Okay. So first off, thank you. These are excellent questions. I appreciate also bringing up space. I think it’s a very interesting hot topic. I’ll try to do these in order.

First, on the Iran conflict: I think this is definitely shining a light on the need for indigenous
power development in Korea. I wrote a piece earlier into the conflict on this topic, thinking about
how the Lee Jae-myung administration has been battling two halves of their own administration on either the pro-renewables versus what is the future of nuclear energy, and finding more of pragmatic, practical solution in between the two.

What has been a very evident outcome from this—and from the holdup not only for petroleum, but also for LNG—and the conversation about what Korea’s looking at down the road and needing to source from Australia or other spaces in the Indo-Pacific because of these concerns, is that we are seeing this administration hold to the 11th Basic Energy Plan’s plan for two new large-scale reactors and an SMR in the hopes of having this online before 2040.

So the fact that we’re seeing them hold to that—there’s not contestation around that—is not
necessarily a big shift for those who are very pro-nuclear initiative in Korea, but it’s a
recognition of the value of it and necessity of continuing that growth and having localized sources of energy or indigenous energy. I think that’s one of the easiest outcomes we’re seeing very quickly.

On the workforce development: this is an excellent question because I think in the U.S. in
particular, we’re seeing a lot of new investment coming into the U.S. in high and advanced
technology. We can talk TSMC, we can talk Korea, we can talk Japan—setting up shop in spaces that maybe don’t necessarily have the localized workforce. This is becoming a very interesting question at the corporation level: how do you find, source, and foster that type of work?

There are good programs starting up in universities in different states and cities where you’re
seeing a lot of Indo-Pacific investment coming in, but it’s still a question. We don’t have as
large—and maybe as championed—a nuclear energy talent pipeline as you have in Korea.

Even Korea in recent years has seen some of their numbers going down, especially after the Moon administration initially said they were going to phase out nuclear. I talked to students in nuclear energy or nuclear engineering departments who were concerned they might graduate with these amazing top-school degrees and not know where they’re going to head next. That reversal maybe is a good sign, but still that uncertainty is not what you want to say to young people in the next generation.

In the U.S., I’ve heard the term used more colloquially as a “retirement tsunami,” because you have a lot of brilliant expertise in the U.S. nuclear industry that is getting ready to retire, and you
don’t want to be short on that. You want the mentorship and development and that expertise—even if we’re talking new technologies, that experience still plays forward.

So I think there should be a good opportunity for a little bit more government involvement. I don’t
think it should fall specifically to foreign companies on how do you source work and develop the talent pipeline. So I think there could be opportunities here for government-to-government, or fostering programs that can have grants attached to other things like that.

And then on the space side: this is getting really interesting. I’ve talked with colleagues—
obviously, it’s new, and we’re seeing where this is going to be headed. And I say new—I should say on the commercial side. This is not new on NASA’s side when we talk about space propulsion and research being done in that area.

I’ve been hearing more on the commercial side of developing different types of nuclear batteries
that are going to be utilizing materials that do not fall in some of the risk categories we talked
about earlier. So they’re taking advantage in other spaces to try to develop this. And that’s very
exciting. I know XenoPower has been in the news quite recently in that context.

I think this is a new area. As someone who does the policy work, I’m curious about the technology, but I’m also curious—and a little concerned—about the regulation and the development of these things. Where is the responsibility when you’re developing these types of products? How are they moving through the market, and how are you tracking this? Because maybe it’s not the fissile material we’re concerned about, but it’s still radioactive material. We’re seeing this boom in the commercial sector of trying to fit a new niche that is going to be
important. It will be interesting to see where early research presents opportunities for the
conversation—especially for reactors on the moon, as some of the context—and we’re seeing a lot of policy enthusiasm.

I also want to see a little bit more scientific community collaboration, and understand where
private industry is going to fit into this mix as well. So I’m happy to talk afterwards as well if you have additional insights. These are some of the things I’m tracking, both on the excited side but also curious to see: how quickly can regulation keep up? And if we’re having it more in the private sector, where are we tracking these initiatives and how are we collaborating on them?

Ellen Kim: Let’s go to the questions here first and then I’ll turn to the online question from the online audience.

Audience Member: Thank you for your very useful discussion and I have a question about cybersecurity—a very quick question. Sometimes we talk about China, Russia, and North Korea together. But in my opinion, in terms of the close relationships between Russia and China, and Russia and North Korea, sometimes China feels uncomfortable and that close relationship is a big stress to South Korea.

So in the perspective of security—cybersecurity—Russia transferring to North Korea technology about hacking, etc.—what do you think about China’s thoughts and China’s position about this close relationship?

Ellen Kim: Do you want me to take one more question from the online? Is that cyber-related questions or—.

So there are three questions: one for both speakers and then questions for each individual.

For both, you both talk about how the November Joint Fact Sheet creates new space for U.S.-ROK nuclear and cyber cooperation. But when it comes to implementing that commitment, what do you see as the biggest obstacle?

For Ms. Orta, there is a question about how other players factor into U.S.-ROK bilateral nuclear
cooperation. What does this mean for Russian and Chinese shares in the export market? What does France’s offer to work with South Korea on LEU SSN propulsion implicate for U.S.-ROK cooperation?

And for Mr. Garcia, are there any new ideas for better responding to cyberattacks? Do they involve new agencies, policies, etc., or are we relying on existing regimes?

Ellen Kim: Would you want to go first, Sebastian?

Sebastian Garcia: I can take the first question. I think this dovetails into the question on obstacles too.

China’s stance on many different parts of this new North Korea–Russia alignment is something that people have been watching closely, and a lot of ink has been put to paper trying to ascertain what Beijing’s reaction is to all of this—from people ranging from: this is a wedge point that the U.S. and South Korea should lean on to try to get China to be more helpful with North Korean denuclearization; to concerns that this alliance with Russia emboldens North Korea to act in ways that China might view as unstable; to people who believe that China doesn’t see this as much of a core threat.

Where I land on this as far as cybersecurity is concerned is that it is an interesting change from
the usual kind of technology transfer. There are experts who say that essentially anytime you see a North Korean cyberattack, whatever capability you see there is something that has been diffused down from China, and China probably has the more advanced version of that. So people have looked at North Korean cyber capabilities as a way of gauging where China’s cybersecurity is at.

So I think that shift could be interesting if that’s deliberate and China is losing out on a
testing ground for its own cyber capabilities because North Korea is shifting more toward Russia. But in my overall assessment, I think it’s still a wait-and-see game, especially with the showing of trilateral solidarity at the Beijing Victory Day Parade between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The idea of it being this critical hinge-point wedge that could really push China and Russia apart, I’m not really seeing take shape yet.

And that does lead to the biggest obstacle, one of which I think is just scope—and that alignment of burden sharing and responsibility. North Korea is the primary aggressor in cyberspace toward South Korea—responsible for 80% of the attacks on public networks that we’ve seen in 2025. But the U.S. is the biggest victim of cyberattacks in the world—receives more cyberattacks than any other country. And while North Korea does punch above its weight class, in terms of cybersttacks, we have to keep in mind that 40% of cyberattacks have been
attributed to China or entities operating out of China. China is always going to be the main
strategic priority of the United States when it comes to cyber defense, as well as other national
security issues.

And so one thing that always comes up is attribution—being able to call out where an attack came from, identify which government was responsible for it. That is an area where South Korea historically has been at odds with the United States in attributing cyberattacks toward China and trying to more aggressively call out China in international fora in that way.

So the U.S. and South Korea need to coordinate on that burden-sharing basis: what is our combined approach toward China, and how much bandwidth does the U.S. have to address North Korea and China at the same time? And I think that’s a place where—with South Korea’s technological innovation—they can show: yes, we are building the next generation AI-enabled cyber capabilities; we can handle our own; and we can even export that to NATO and to Europe as well, with new research and development centers being opened in Europe.

I’ll leave to Kayla for the nuclear obstacle.

Kayla Orta: Yes, certainly. These are excellent questions and I’m glad we can hear from some of our online audience as well.

I’m going to start with the Russia and China side of this. What’s interesting here—and what gives a point of concern—is that we are seeing not necessarily a bifurcation, but almost a segmentation of different regions in the world that are working more collaboratively with, say, Russia, China, or the U.S. We’re seeing a lot of attention focused into newcomer countries on the African continent. We’re seeing Russia focusing more closer to home—states more in that region—and particularly Kazakhstan. So we’re seeing movements into specific pockets of operation.

And I think what’s concerning for the U.S. is that I’ve heard someone refer to nuclear energy
partnerships as being a “100-year relationship.” When you build these large reactors—this might change as we move into SMRs and shorter construction times—but because of how long they operate, once you establish that partnership and relationship (and this has been successful in the Korea context), you build it from there. Maybe it starts as an energy collaboration and it goes. So losing early footholds in some of these newcomer countries will mean that the U.S. and allied nations working in this space will have a harder time breaking into those markets.

So when we think about Russia and China share, they are still most definitely moving forward in
different types of nuclear-related facilities. It’s not necessarily just reactors; Russia is
exporting other types of facilities as well. So there’s a bit of this catch-up sense additionally.

The question on France working with Korea: Korea and France have very good relationships. You can go back to history and talk about nuclear supply chains that already exist there. Korea has worked with many countries—Canada included—on developing its own civil nuclear industry. So the recommendation or offer from France to partner on this is not unforeseen.

I think Korea’s also taking some early steps. They recently hosted the IAEA in Korea, and there’s a lot of conversation about if they do start pursuing this, they would need to establish, I believe it’s Article 14 of their agreement with the IAEA, and adjust that to allow for nuclear propulsion submarines. So they’re already taking steps in that direction, and working more collaboratively with international know-how is only going to be better for Korea.

On the biggest obstacles—because there’s two sides, nuclear submarines and nuclear energy—I will say the biggest obstacle for Korea is going to be the timeline on nuclear-powered submarines. This is not something you snap your finger and you have it developed. This requires building infrastructure, technical know-how, choosing which designs are smartest, making sure regulation is in place, having different procedures like that.

Especially because the announcement was that Korea would build them in the Philly Shipyard. The Philly Shipyard is not designed for this; it is not up to the standard for that. It will take time
to even develop that. So there are a lot of questions still. I think it will be a decade or two before we see this type of work.

And in particular, Korea’s going to want to work very closely with the U.S. Even if the technology
is sourced from a different space, it’s going to be integrated into the U.S.-ROK alliance and
partnership for security dynamics in the region. The partnership has to remain. We’ll have to see
how that comes into play.

And then the biggest obstacle on the civil nuclear side is balancing expectations and opportunities to move forward. We are in the midst of the 2015 123 Agreement. Maybe we’ll see shifting dynamics or refocusing—and honestly, I think that’s good for the partnership. There needs to be very high-level, and agency- and ministry-level attention to the partnership, but also balancing that with what the future timeline expectations are and where you can move forward in the short term.

Maybe moving forward and integrating supply chains, working more with U.S. partners to build the large-scale reactors that the Trump administration is talking about wanting to build—there are good opportunities for vendors and partnerships there.

Maybe looking at different areas to invest in fuel diversification. There are near-term things that
can be happening and are happening right now, and then there’s an opportunity to look down the road and say: before this agreement is done, before we shift to a new agreement, what are the things we want to accomplish before we hit that deadline marker?

Ellen Kim: With that note, I think that we have to close today’s discussion, but this has been a really excellent discussion. I learned so much from both of you, and I’m sure that our audience will feel the same way.

This is a very important issue, so we’ll continue to follow this. For those who want to know more
about this issue, their research and analysis will be featured in Korea Policy, which will be out
in June. So please stay tuned for that.

Once again, thank you very much. Please join me in a warm round of applause for our speakers today. Thank you very much. ###