Reuters:
South Korea and the United States said on Friday they would deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea to counter a threat from North Korea, drawing a sharp and swift protest from neighboring China.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, anti-missile system will be used only as protection against North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, the South’s Defence Ministry and the U.S. Defence Department said in a joint statement.
“This is an important … decision,” General Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, said in a statement. “North Korea’s continued development of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction require the alliance to take this prudent, protective measure to bolster our … missile defense.”
Beijing said on Friday it lodged complaints with the U.S. and South Korean ambassadors over the THAAD decision.
China said the system would destabilize the security balance in the region without achieving anything to end the North’s nuclear program. China is North Korea’s main ally but opposes its pursuit of nuclear weapons and backed the latest United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang in March.
“China strongly urges the United States and South Korea to stop the deployment process of the THAAD anti-missile system, not take any steps to complicate the regional situation and do nothing to harm China’s strategic security interests,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
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.
The THAAD will be deployed to U.S. Forces Korea “to protect alliance military forces from North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile threats,” the joint statement said. The United States maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war.
“When the THAAD system is deployed to the Korean Peninsula, it will be focused solely on North Korean nuclear and missile threats and would not be directed towards any third-party nations,” the statement said.
SEVEN SUMMITS
The decision to deploy THAAD is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North, which also includes a series of bilateral sanctions by Seoul and Washington as well as layers of U.N. sanctions.
South Korea has been reluctant to discuss THAAD openly, given the opposition of China, its main trading partner and an increasingly close diplomatic ally. South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have held seven summit meetings since both took office in 2013.
Russia is also opposed to basing a THAAD system in South Korea. Its foreign ministry will take the deployment into account in Moscow’s military planning, Interfax news agency quoted it as saying on Friday.
