Seoul paves way for missile shield
THAAD system cleared for full deployment after latest nuclear test by North
SEOUL: A day after Pyongyang’s sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation, South Korea paved the way for the full deployment of a US missile defence system while its military conducted a live-fire drill with North Korea’s test site as the virtual target.
South Korea’s Environment Ministry yesterday decided to conditionally approve an environmental impact report on the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system, Yonhap News reported.
That would remove the final administrative hurdle for complete installment of the missile shield, known as THAAD, which China sees as a threat to the region’s “strategic equilibrium”.
Following the nuclear test, US President Donald Trump threatened to increase economic sanctions and halt trade with any nation doing business with North Korea – a threat he has used before without following through. That list would include China, the United States’s biggest trading partner, which accounted for about a sixth of its overseas commerce.
Trump, who threatened over the weekend to pull out of the US-South Korea trade agreement, took a shot at President Moon Jae-in’s administration after the nuclear test. On Twitter, he said that South Korea is finding that its “talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work”.
In response, Moon’s office said that war should not be repeated and that South Korea and its allies “will pursue the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula through peace”. The two leaders have not spoken since North Korea detonated what it called a hydrogen bomb.
Moon took power in May pledging to seek peace talks with Kim’s regime. He initially opposed the early deployment of THAAD, though has shifted in recent months as North Korea advanced its push for an intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike the United States.
The disagreement between allies comes as Trump’s administration looks to convince China and Russia to support stronger sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations Security Council. The United States and other nations have called for an emergency meeting in New York.
While Trump did not rule out an attack on North Korea when asked by a reporter, the focus of his Tweets and remarks by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were on tighter sanctions, not military action. China and Russia oppose military force to deal with North Korea’s nuclear programme.
Sunday’s test, North Korea’s first since Trump took office, was a “perfect success” and confirmed the precision and technology of the bomb, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
Energy from the underground explosion, near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in northeast North Korea, was about six times stronger than the nuclear test of a year ago, South Korea’s weather agency said.
Meanwhile, South Korean media urged Seoul to consider building its own nuclear weapons.
The South, which hosts 28,500 US troops to defend it from the North, is banned from building its own nuclear weapons under a 1974 atomic energy deal it signed with the United States, which instead offers a “nuclear umbrella” against potential attacks.
But growing nuclear and missile threats from its belligerent northern neighbour is prompting some in the South to call for its own nuclear armament.
“As nuclear weapons are being churned out above our heads, we can’t always rely on the US nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence,” the mass-circulation Donga Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial yesterday.
The United States stationed some of its atomic weapons in the South following the 1950-53 Korean War, but withdrew them in 1991 when the two Koreas jointly declared they would make the peninsula nuclear-free.
That pact was no longer binding, the editorial said, and added: “There is no reason for us to cling onto the declaration when it has become the ‘denuclearisation of South Korea’, not the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
“The Seoul government should not ‘hesitate’ in reintroducing US tactical nuclear weapons as well as building its own atomic devices.”
Such a move would undoubtedly alarm Pyongyang, which consistently says it is at risk of attack by the United States. — Bloomberg / AFP