The ROK has been at least trying to play things smart with regards to keeping much cooler heads than the US over the past 8yrs. Even if things have regressed on their end, I think that they aren’t likely to push for making their own nukes. The DPRK knows that having them and using them are two very different things. Having them means the US and ROK can’t just attack out of nowhere without a real fucking response. But using them means that it would likely lead to all nuclear nations unloading. As far as Japan is concerned, they are one of the most anti-nuke nations period given that they are the only nation to have seen the results and horror.

The US so far seems to have the most trigger happy assholes that default to “just nuke 'em and no more issues” for just about every geopolitical issue ever since we used them. So far we have lucked out that the presidents that were overseeing the initial push to build so many of them woke up to the death cult of war hawks. The others either saw that if the US were to use them first, then it would mean we would lose the war of optics. Or they happened to be in charge while less tension on that level was going on.

And of course Reagan literally seems to have only learned how truly horrible and fucked shit would be after watching a made for TV movie about the horrors of a post-nuclear war world would be like. Better than nothing but it really pisses me off how so many US leaders both A: acted like the USSR couldn’t possibly be upping their shit based on real fear of the US just doing what we keep doing in just attacking/invading other nations. And B: honestly just seem to think that it is okay for US to put them everywhere but any other nation doing so is “acts of aggression.”