Seoul was chosen as the second host of the Nuclear Security Summit at the first such summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. The decision was made unanimously by the leaders of 47 nations and the heads of the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Union attending the summit.

According to the summit decision, Korea will also host the General Assembly meeting of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT) in 2011 before it hosts the second nuclear summit in 2012.

The second nuclear summit, to be attended by about 50 leaders of countries and other ranking officials, will be the biggest international conference Korea has ever hosted in terms of the number of leaders a meeting has invited to the country.

At the D.C. meeting, President Obama suggested Korea host the second summit. His suggestion seems to have been made based on Korea’s enhanced capacity to host important international meetings such as the G-20 summit, its symbolic geo-political location facing North Korea which poses a nuclear threat, and accumulated trust between President Obama and President Lee through bilateral Korea-U.S. summits and various other international occasions.

Korea experts in the United States commented that Korea’s hosting of the nuclear summit would raise the country’s national standing and augment its international leadership. David Straub from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University said that the decision letting Korea be the host reflected the country’s enhanced role in international society, growing bilateral ties between Korea and the United States, and friendship between the Korean and the U.S. Presidents.

Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that the President’s efforts to assume a bigger role in the international arena had seen progress with Korea being selected as the next host in Washington, D.C.

Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy under the Asia Foundation, said that Korea’s hosting of the nuclear summit would provide the country with a chance to show its leadership in security-related international issues.

The second Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul in 2012 will review the progress made until then as to the agreement reached at the first summit by the leaders to secure all vulnerable nuclear material within four years.