Legitimizing nuclear power: Rhetoric, myth and symbols in South Korea's official nuclear communication, 1986–2016

Understanding how nuclear power is justified matters for debates over energy security and climate change. Yet research has paid limited attention to how language, narratives, and images work together to sustain these justifications over time. This article examines South Korea's official nuclear communication from 1986 to 2016 through interpretive document analysis. It analyzes government and industry publications, educational materials, advertisements, sponsored journalism, and visual campaigns using rhetoric, myth, and symbol as analytical categories. Naming and euphemism downplayed risk in official accounts. Repeated narratives presented nuclear power as safe, affordable, indispensable, and environmentally responsible. Visual symbols associated it with scientific control and everyday life. These justifications persisted through adaptation. Major accidents were reframed as problems of technical management, while environmental claims were incorporated into established narratives of national development. Repeated circulation through education, advertising, and sponsored media formed a communication infrastructure that presented nuclear power as a normal and desirable national choice. The study examines the construction and circulation of these representations; it does not establish their causal effects on public acceptance or policy continuity. It advances energy communication research by showing how rhetorical adjustment, symbolic selection, and institutional repetition jointly renew justifications for contested technologies. The findings suggest that energy policy research should examine communication alongside the economic and institutional conditions sustaining energy systems.