The Daily Beast:
Donald Trump, on his first day in office, is facing an impeachment crisis. It’s not targeting him, but it affects his presidency deeply by further straining testy relations with Beijing.
On Monday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced a delay in the acquisition of land for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, designed to shoot down incoming missiles. The timetable for this preliminary step “may be pushed back a bit,” said ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun.
Last July, South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, after months of deliberation and over the strenuous objections of China, agreed to deploy THAAD, as the Lockheed Martin system is known, to defend against the threat of North Korean missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.
In November, the South Korean military and Lotte Group tentatively agreed to swap land, allowing the first THAAD battery to be located on the site of its Jack-Nicklaus-designed golf course, Skyhill Country Club, almost 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.
This week, the Defense Ministry reported that Lotte was not ready to give the final go-ahead for the trade. “There is a procedure, that the board of directors of Lotte holds a meeting to approve the final cost estimation, but that meeting has not yet been held, and we expect the meeting to be arranged soon,” the ministry announced.
One might wonder whether Trump will side with golf course developers, but that would be to trivialize a truly momentous decision.
Beijing is vehemently opposed to THAAD. It has been pressuring South Korea not to go through with the deployment, and it has just found a weak link.
