Interesting find. It‘s well known that Park Chung Hee had serious nuclear ambitions. And all his subordinates were telling lies like hell to the nervous Muricans, hahaha.
The French were more than interested in selling the processing plant but the US side pressed them to cancel the deal. Without French tech transfer Israel wouldn‘t have the bomb either.
As a compensation the Americans shared civil nuclear tech (Westinghouse) which propelled Korean atomic industry. Korea exported reactors to UAE, supplies Russian reactor project in Egypt and probably bags new reactor deals in Poland.
Nuclear weapon programs can‘t be held secret forever. Right now Korea builds triad delivery systems for nuclear warheads when breaking out becomes inevitable. This time openly for China, Japan and DPRK to see. They tested the SLBM when the Chinese foreign minister was on visit in Seoul
I come across many foreign dudes yapping about US wartime OPCON over ROK military and mock us as a vassal state. As if Korean generals would follow orders from US when shit hits the fan on our turf.
PS: very interesting that Taiwan tried to help ROK out by obtaining French processing tech. For Korea or also for themselves? They had a clandestine nuclear weapons program as well at that time or a few years later. Obviously the US stopped that program too full brake.