North Korea rouses neighbours to reconsider nuclear weapons

In South Korea, polls show 60% of the population favours building nuclear weapons

As North Korea races to build a weapon that for the first time could threaten American cities, its neighbours are debating whether they need their own nuclear arsenals.

The North’s rapidly advancing capabilities have scrambled military calculations across the region, and doubts are growing the United States will be able to keep the atomic genie in the bottle.

For the first time in recent memory, there is a daily argument raging in both South Korea and Japan — sometimes in public, more often in private — about the nuclear option, driven by worry that the United States might hesitate to defend the