The meeting between Jensen Huang from Nvidia and Lee Jae Yong from Samsung over fried chicken has been a major topic of discussion in South Korea. His announcement of supplying 2.6 million Graphic Cards marked an unprecedented investment that has brought a renewed sense of optimism to South Korea after the impeachment crisis. The KOSPI index has surged, and yet another of Huang’s remarks continues to dominate Korean news and social media:
“Electric power will become increasingly important.”
For South Korea, a technologically advanced nation where AI is emerging as the next national engine after semiconductors, this development is seen as a clear green light by many. Yet, the green light for the green transition itself seems to have dimmed. The denuclearisation policy for carbon neutrality driven by lessons from the Fukushima nuclear accident, once promoted under Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party (DP) government, was reversed by Yoon Suk-yeol’s People Power Party (PPP) administration. Now, even as the DP regains power, the revival of nuclear energy, seen as essential for sustaining AI-driven growth, appears almost inevitable.
Current President Lee Jae-myung has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 53-61% through renewable energy expansion, while recognising nuclear energy’s role in ensuring supply stability and energy security. The government’s biennial electricity supply plan, under the Electricity Business Act, aims to boost renewable energy yet continues with small modular reactor (SMR) projects whilst remaining open to large-scale nuclear plants.
President Lee thus takes a middle path between the pro- and anti-nuclear stances of his predecessors, arguing that it is difficult to sustain AI development, which requires stable power, under a full nuclear phase-out. With record-high AI R&D investment of 35.3 trillion KRW and a national push to train talent through 2,000 AI-focused schools, the state’s integration of AI across all ministries makes it nearly impossible to resist nuclear energy.
Beyond the level of national strategy, the instability of the international order has also drawn renewed attention to the importance of rebuilding the nuclear energy value chain. Since the Russia–Ukraine war, Europe, the U.S., and their allies have begun restructuring nuclear supply chains around trusted partnerships. Although the Fukushima disaster once provoked widespread anti-nuclear sentiment and triggered denuclearisation policies in countries such as the United States, Japan, and Germany, the recent surge in AI data centres and reshoring policies under the CHIPS Act in the U.S. has led to upward revisions in projected electricity demand, sparking a new wave of nuclear revival.
While the United States continues to lead global nuclear production, the retreat of nations that previously committed to denuclearisation has created a vacuum now being filled by Russia and China, countries that Western powers remain perpetually wary of. China currently operates 58.1 GW and has rapidly scaled up its nuclear capacity, positioning it to soon overtake France as the world’s second-largest nuclear energy producer.
This restructuring of the international environment surrounding nuclear energy has sounded an alarm for South Korea. Geopolitically, the country has long found itself wedged among four major powers. Situated between China and Japan, it has often become a point of collision within international political regimes, and ultimately, following the interventions of Russia (Soviet Union) and the U.S., it became a divided nation.
Having achieved miraculous economic growth after gaining independence from Japanese colonial rule and joining the ranks of advanced economies, South Korea regards sustaining economic development as a matter directly tied to national survival. Therefore, the fact that a president from a party once championing denuclearisation for environmental reasons is now seeking to revitalise nuclear development, for both AI industry and energy security, reflects a reality inseparable from the nation’s historical trajectory and the contemporary international order.
In other words, concepts such as ‘degrowth’, which frequently emerge in European environmental discourses, are fundamentally difficult to accept in the South Korean context.
What is particularly interesting is that the earlier environmental agenda, which promoted the rapid expansion of renewable energy following denuclearisation, also stemmed from this very national mindset for development, and some scholars called it Developmental Environmentalism. It arose from the recognition that the fossil-fuel-based power generation model was economically unstable, due to an annual energy import cost of approximately 120 billion USD, and politically unsustainable as international society increasingly demanded eco-friendly commitments. Thus, South Korea internalised “green goals” for renewable energy, such as solar and wind power and incorporated them into its technological and industrial strategy.
In other words, South Korea’s environmental agenda was not primarily born out of a moral or ecological concern about climate change and environmental degradation, but rather evolved as a form of domestically oriented economic statecraft, combining the imperatives of intensified geopolitical competition and the nation’s desire to strengthen its global positioning. Given this background, the country is advancing a strategy of cultivating new green industries while displacing the fossil-fuel sector through the Schumpeterian dynamic of creative destruction.
As a neighbouring nation to Japan, where the Fukushima disaster occurred, South Korea has moved beyond the period of active denuclearisation driven by fears of earthquake-related risks. With recent wars and global power shifts, efforts to rebuild its nuclear capacity are neither new nor unexpected. Currently, the Korean government is kicking off large-scale support for AI and related industries as both a survival strategy and a shared public aspiration, in a domestic context where corporations are viewed not as enemies of capitalism but as essential to national survival. It is another distinct characteristic compared to Western countries.
Regardless of the ongoing debate about the actual environmental implications of nuclear power, South Korea’s political-economic decisions reveal significant implications for how societies approach agendas that require a strong sense of social consensus, such as the pursuit of a sustainable environment. For developing countries, environmental issues often remain a distant ideal unless the environmental agenda opens new windows of opportunity and serves as a foundation for economic growth.
Therefore, rather than emphasising environmental agendas grounded solely in environmental justice, it is crucial to expand environmental policy space that incorporates and engages the perspectives of Global South countries, fostering environmental discourses that align with their developmental aspirations and contribute to sustainable growth.
By Hwikyung Lee
November 20, 2025
