| Summary/Abstract |
Reverberation refers to the role that external domestic and international variables can play in shaping the win-set of a negotiation between two countries. These variables create political considerations, political mandates, and political constraint outside of the technical discussion that influence the negotiation. This article looks at the degree to which political variables “reverberated’ onto the 2015 civil nuclear agreement between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK), the end product of a four-and-a-half-year negotiation specifying the terms under which the ROK could use US-supplied technology and materials to pursue sovereign nuclear power generation and nuclear energy provision to third countries. It will argue that while the potential was high for this technical negotiation to become politicized in a domestic context in South Korea and potentially erode alliance relations, the two countries managed to keep the disagreements in the experts’ space, without negative reverberating effects on political leaders.
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