(Hot news Today • Saturday 9 July 2016)
S Korea to deploy US anti-missile
system despite Chinese protests
Seoul — South Korea and the United States
announced yesterday that they had decided to deploy an advanced US missile
defence system in the Korean Peninsula in the face of growing threats from
North Korea, despite strong protests from China and Russia. The anti-missile
system provides yet another friction point as the US seeks to maintain its
strategic dominance in the region amid China’s rise, and Beijing pushes back
against what it sees as a Washington-led containment effort.
The announcement comes just days before an
expected international court ruling on maritime rights in the South China Sea,
a vital trade route where the two sides have been jockeying for control.
Seoul and Washington, which have been in
talks for months on the deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) system, agreed yesterday that it would better protect South Korea and
the US military in the region from North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic
missile capabilities. The US maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy
of the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
Selection of a site for the system could
come “within weeks”, and the allies were working to have it operational by the
end of 2017, a South Korean Defence Ministry official said. There was no
immediate reaction from North Korea to the announcement.
The plan to deploy the system, which fires projectiles
to smash into enemy missiles, angered Beijing and Moscow, which both see it as
a Washington bid to flex military muscle in the region.
China’s Foreign Ministry promptly denounced
the plan and lodged its protest with the US and Korean ambassadors. In a
statement, the ministry said the THAAD system would harm China’s security and
would not contribute to peace on the Korean Peninsula.
The deployment “doesn’t help achieve the
objective of denuclearisation in the peninsula, doesn’t benefit maintaining
peace and stability in the peninsula,” it said. “It’s going towards the
opposite direction of solving the problem via dialogue and negotiation.” It
said it would also “seriously damage the strategic security interests of
countries in the region including China.”
Moscow said any deployment would have
“irreparable consequences” and that it would “most negatively affect global
strategic stability.”
“The US, supported by its partners, are
continuing to build up the potential of the Asia-Pacific segment of the global
anti-missile defence system, which undermines the established strategic balance
in the (region) and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement
yesterday.
Besides the objections from China and
Russia, the new system was likely to face resistance from residents of whatever
part of South Korea is selected for the base.
Villagers and politicians from towns that
have been mentioned as possible sites have said they will oppose it, fearing
that strong electronic signals from the radar might harm residents’ health and
that their towns would become an early target for North Korean missiles should
war break out on the peninsula.
US sought to downplay worries over regional
security. The US Defence Department said yesterday that the THAAD system will
be “focused solely on North Korean nuclear and missile threats and would not be
directed towards any third-party nations.”
The decision to deploy THAAD is the latest
move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North. Other moves include a series
of bilateral sanctions by Seoul and Washington as well as layers of United
Nations’ sanctions.
South Korea has been reluctant to discuss
THAAD openly given the opposition of China, its main trading partner and an
increasingly close diplomatically. China is particularly concerned about THAAD
in South Korea because its powerful radar could give the US military the
ability to quickly detect and track missiles launched in China, analysts said.
Beijing has feared that could strengthen US missile defence systems and weaken
its own nuclear deterrent, although defence officials here said it would not
make much difference to the US military.
China “knows full well that the THAAD being
deployed to South Korea is not aimed at it at all,” said Mr Yoo Dong-ryol, who
heads the Korea Institute of Liberal Democracy in Seoul. “It just doesn’t like
more American weapons system being brought in so close to it.” AGENCIES