Getting closer to doomsday

Korea can turn its dual crises into opportunity

By Kim Won-soo

A time bomb has been set to the man-made doomsday. Last week the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) advanced the doomsday clock to 89 seconds to midnight, which is the metaphoric moment of humanity’s potential extinction. It is the worst-ever since the clock started 78 years ago by the renowned scientists including those who participated in the Manhattan Project for the first nuclear bombs used in 1945. Among others, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer were instrumental in creating this initiative to warn humanity of looming existential threats. It is also the first time for the clock to be set by a one-second difference.

For the last seven years, the clock consecutively keeps breaking its record for all-time high. In 2018, the two-minute mark, the highest it reached at the peak of the Cold War, was broken. The 2020 clock saw it broken and advanced to 100 seconds. Then it moved to 90 seconds in 2023 when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

This year the BAS decided to move the clock by one second. This may look not much as compared to previous instances when it moved by a minute, 20 seconds and 10 seconds. But I think this move has been carefully weighed, carrying far deeper symbolism for the following three reasons.

The first and foremost message it intends to send is the stark warning that the button on a time bomb has been pushed and the countdown starts ticking from this year on. Stopping the countdown must be done urgently as a matter of life or death. And it requires real tangible action. Secondly, it highlights the urgency of turning away from the current business-as-usual mentality and mere lip service of political leaders in addressing the existential threats. Humanity cannot afford to endure even one second delay of action. Now every second counts for the survival of humanity. Last but not least, it reminds the world of the widening gap between the rapidly aggravating existential threats and the massively sluggish coping action. Humanity is facing the double jeopardy of spiking threats and collapsing global governance.

Existential threats are exacerbating on every front. The specter of nuclear winter comes alive in both rhetoric and posture by nuclear weapon states. As a reaction, public opinion is rising to push nuclear armament in a growing number of non-nuclear weapon states including South Korea. This bodes extremely ill for the increasingly battered non-proliferation regime represented by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Climate disaster fueled by global boiling is wreaking unprecedented havoc in daily life through extreme heat, severe flooding and massive wildfires, just to name a few. Rising sea levels threaten the very survival of not only low-lying island countries in the developing world but also the coastal mega cities in the developed world. Biological risks of cross-border pandemics are heightened both by natural mutation and artificial biotech. Disruptive technologies are multiplying in cyber and outer space as well as artificial intelligence. Their misuse or abuse will cause devastating ripple effects to all aspects of human life, political, economic, social, environmental and even security.

All these threats require greater global cooperation and collaboration. Unfortunately, however, the global reality moves in the opposite direction. Major power rivalry is intensifying to push strategic competition and confrontation. Global governance represented by the United Nations is faltering. The liberal international order buttressed by multilateralism is going through a severe stress test due to the retreat of global leadership of the United States as well as the unilateralist approaches favored by the second Trump administration.

Political leaders must be awakened. Given the negative trends of polarization and populism around the world, however, it is hard to expect self-enlightenment of politicians. Global civil society needs to be mobilized to take a greater role in exerting stronger pressure for preventing the slides to a man-made apocalypse. Time is running out for our succeeding generations.

Korea stands at a forefront of escalating existential threats. Korea must discard the misguided self-illusion of a bystander watching fires across the river, as it will be the first victim of such fires. The country must be proactive in stopping and ultimately reversing the countdown to doomsday.

For that, Korea must do 3 R’s: 1) reassess its current coping strategy with each of the existential threats with the focus on what to do and how to do it in filling the gap between the risks and the actions; 2) regroup its domestic house to devise a bipartisan political and social contract on the way forward; and 3) reset its internal and external policies to facilitate global consensus on how to engineer a global blueprint for action to stop and reverse the doomsday clock. Then Korea can turn its own dual crises, internal and external, into an opportunity. It will be the best case Korea can make for its second leap.

Kim Won-soo is the former under secretary-general of the United Nations and the High Representative for Disarmament. He is now a chair professor of Kyung Hee University in Korea.