"Furious China sees U.S.
missile defense plan for
South Korea as direct threat"
U.S. military officials are trying to pacify a
furious China in the wake of Washington’s plan
to deploy a battery of advanced missile defense
systems in South Korea, insisting to angry
military leaders in Beijing that the weapons
would be solely targeting ballistic missile threats
from North Korea and not undercut China’s own
military deterrent.
Beijing has denounced the planned deployment
of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
weapon in South Korea and has already
retaliated in ways large and small, including
blocking a U.N. Security Council resolution
condemning a recent North Korean missile test
and canceling appearances by South Korean “K-
Pop” music stars.
“If THAAD is deployed, it will sour [South
Korea‘s] relations with China and Russia, trigger
an arms race and damage trade,” the state-
controlled China Daily newspaper wrote in an
editorial Thursday. “It will make it difficult for
the country to seek cooperation from China and
Russia in denuclearizing the peninsula.”
Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S.
Forces-Korea, met in Seoul on Thursday with
Vice Adm. James D. Syring, U.S. Missile
Defense Agency chief, to discuss the
deployment. THAAD is expected to arrive in
South Korea by next year.
Talking with reporters in South Korea , Adm.
Syring stressed that the THAAD-based missile
defense system is integral to curbing North
Korea’s nuclear ambitions but would not
undermine China ’s ballistic missile defense
efforts or pose a legitimate threat to Beijing in
the region.
“We don’t defend against China as a threat,” he
said during a press conference in Seoul shortly
after meeting with Gen. Brooks.
But such comments have done little to appease
Beijing, which says the weapons system is a
Washington scheme to increase the U.S. military
presence in the Pacific, posing a direct threat to
China’s military interests in the region.
Chinese defense officials have threatened to
break off cooperation with U.S.-led efforts to
curb the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile
programs. Chinese diplomats blocked efforts by
the U.N. Security Council condemning North
Korea’s most recent missile tests, refusing to
approve a council statement on the tests
without language opposing the planned THAAD
deployments to South Korea .
Beijing also has argued that the THAAD
deployment in South Korea will prompt an
acceleration of North Korea ’s nuclear weapons
development program. U.S. Ambassador to the
U.N. Samantha Power and senior White House
officials have rejected that assertion.
Even North Korea has taken notice of the
growing international pressure on South Korean
President Park Geun-hye for her decision last
month to accept the THAAD system, saying
Seoul has had to “dodge mounting criticism” at
home and abroad.
Ms. Park’s government has been “driven into a
tight corner by the strong criticism and protest
against the THAAD deployment from not only
the South Korean public, but also from all
Koreans and international society,” according to
a statement by a spokesman for the North’s
Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the
Country given to China ’s official Xinhua News
Agency.
During the Seoul meeting Thursday, the senior
U.S. military leaders discussed the THAAD
deployment as the first step in developing a
“layered missile defense system” in South Korea
to deter the “serious nuclear and missile threat
North Korea poses,” according a command
statement.
“North Korea’s latest missile launches, in
violation of multiple [United Nations] resolutions
that ban North Korea from any activity using
ballistic missile technology,” are clear examples
of the need for the THAAD system in the region,
command officials say.
A recent test shot of North Korea’s latest long-
range ballistic missile system landed 150 miles
west of Akita prefecture in northern Japan,
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said
last week.
The missile shot was the closest Pyongyang’s
rapidly developing nuclear weapons program
has come to reaching the Japanese coastline,
Mr. Nakatani told The Wall Street Journal.
