First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo (right) and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker walk into a launch meeting Tuesday morning at South Korea’s Foreign Ministry in Seoul. (Foreign Ministry) South Korea and the US have formally launched interagency talks on nuclear cooperation centered on Seoul’s pursuit of nuclear-powered submarines and greater autonomy over the nuclear fuel cycle.First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker convened the launch meeting Tuesday morning at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, after a delay of several months.The talks, which will continue through Wednesday will focus on how to implement security agreements outlined in the Nov. 14 joint fact sheet, which was released after the second summit between Korean President Lee Jae Myung and US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the 2025 APEC summit in Gyeongju.Sector-specific consultations were heldTuesday afternoon under the direction of the two countries’ national security offices. Hooker also is set to meet South Korean national security adviser Wi Sung-lac after the launch meeting. An official dinner hosted by Park was scheduled for Tuesday evening.On Wednesday, the second day of talks, morning and afternoon sessions will be led by the national security offices.The main items on the agenda are South Korea’s ambitions to add nuclear-powered submarines to its Navy and secure the right to civil uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing.Officials are expected to discuss the two issues in an integrated format, rather than holding separate meetings on each matter, given an overlap in the working-level personnel handling them.The US delegation includes Ivan Kanapathy, senior director for Asia at the National Security Council; David Wilezol, deputy assistant secretary of state for Northeast Asia; Christopher Klein, acting deputy assistant secretary for nuclear nonproliferation and commercial competitiveness; and Matthew Napoli, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration.The Korean delegation comprises officials from the presidential National Security Office, the Foreign Ministry, the Defense Ministry, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, and the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission.Seoul is seeking to move the talks quickly beyond a ceremonial launch and into substantive negotiations, as the security consultations — initially expected earlier this year — had been delayed.The delay came amid South Korea’s investigation into a massive data breach involving US-listed e-commerce giant Coupang and a delay in the passage of a special law at the National Assembly to implement Seoul’s $350 billion investment package in the US. First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo (right) and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker shake hands for a photo before a launch meeting Tuesday morning at South Korea’s Foreign Ministry in Seoul. (Foreign Ministry) The joint fact sheet contains a US commitment to support the process that would lead to South Korea’s civil uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, both of which have been effectively barred under the current civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, known as the 123 Agreement. Seoul and Washington first signed the agreement in 1972 and revised it in 2015.Under the current agreement, Seoul requires US approval to enrich uranium — approval that has never been granted, even to civilian use levels of below 20 percent — while spent fuel reprocessing for commercial purposes remains outrightly prohibited. Only limited research into pyroprocessing has been allowed under a joint Korea-US study framework, but that research has since stalled.Seoul sees both uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing as increasingly imperative for its nuclear reactor exports and its own energy security. South Korea is the only country with a comparable level of nuclear power capacity that relies entirely on imported nuclear fuel. South Korea currently operates 26 commercial nuclear reactors.To that end, Seoul is seeking to expedite revisions to the current nuclear agreement regardless of its scheduled expiration in 2035.Seoul also needs US approval to build nuclear-powered submarines due to the current Korea-US 123 agreement, which prohibits nuclear materials, technology and byproducts supplied by the US from being used for “any military purpose.”The meeting came after South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back unveiled a road map on May 26 to launch the country’s first domestically built nuclear-powered submarine in the mid-2030s, while pledging to uphold its nuclear nonproliferation obligations.Ahn underscored that South Korea’s guiding principle is to use low-enriched uranium — containing less than 20 percent uranium-235 — to fuel the submarine’s reactor. This would significantly reduce proliferation risks compared with the more highly enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear weapons.