Tag: THAAD

The fact that this was not leaked to the activist groups to and block the convoy means that the Moon administration sees no need to play the anti-US card yet:

New interceptor missiles were brought onto a U.S. THAAD missile defense base in South Korea on Friday as replacements, the defense ministry said, in a surprise overnight operation aimed at minimizing friction with local residents opposed to the base.

Also brought onto the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) base in the central town of Seongju were power generation equipment and other items to be used to improve the living conditions of troops stationed there, according to the ministry.

The ground transport operation, which began around 10 p.m. Thursday, ended around 6 a.m., officials said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It figures that Korean leftists would be upset the United States military is working on a way to better defend their country:

Korea is back in the hot seat as the U.S. military has announced plans to improve its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries including the one here. 

As the upgrade is focused on extending the range of its defense area, the plan is raising speculations that the launchers may be transferred to Seoul or its surrounding areas, or that additional launchers may be deployed, which may reignite disputes with China over the anti-missile system. A report has also sparked concerns that the U.S. may push Korea to fund the construction of the THAAD base, which could run counter to the allies’ agreement on the issue.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but what is going on here is that the THAAD system’s launchers are hardwired into the rest of the system. What the update will provide is the ability to remote launchers further out away from the rest of the battery wirelessly. What this does is extend the area a THAAD battery can defend.

This is technology that the Patriot missile defense system already has and is only natural that THAAD would eventually develop this technology as well. There are Patriot missile batteries spread out all over South Korea that receive technology updates, but only the THAAD system continues to be continuously protested by the Korean left. Part of this is because former President Park Geun-hye approved the deployment of the battery; to a Korean leftist that means it must be a bad decision.

The second part of this is the China who does not like the deployment of the system. They claim it spies on them which is nonsense, they just use the issue to create a wedge between the U.S. and the ROK. The Moon administration may be calculating that if their supporters keep up their THAAD protests, President Trump will redeploy the system which solves their China problem and is another erasing of a major accomplishment during the former Park administration.

This will cause South Korea to have less ballistic missile defense protection, but to the Korean left they have never looked at North Korea as a threat anyway.

My guess would be that the Moon administration does not want this environmental assessment to begin in order to keep the perception that the THAAD deployment is “temporary”:

South Korea has yet to conduct a full-scale environmental survey of the site of an advanced U.S. anti-missile battery, sources said Sunday, amid lingering opposition from local residents and complaints from China. 

U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) completed installing a full six-launcher Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery at a base in the southern provincial town of Seongju last year in an effort to cope better with growing missile threats from North Korea.

The installation began under the previous administration in 2017 after a scaled-back environmental impact study. Later that year, the government of current President Moon Jae-in took office and decided to implement a full-scale environmental assessment survey of the 700,000-square-meter plot of land before the “provisional” installation becomes final.

But the survey has yet to take place, sources said.

Yonhap via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.

With the USFK cost sharing negotiations currently stalemated, the Chinese may see an opportunity to further drive a wedge between the US-ROK alliance by bringing up the THAAD issue again:

A few hours after Beijing’s announcement that South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha agreed with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi to continue to deal properly with the THAAD issue, Seoul’s foreign ministry confirmed the matter was touched on during their talks.

“Regarding the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) issue, yes, the foreign ministers had sessions on the matter,” an official said. Before the announcement, Seoul’s foreign ministry did not respond to questions regarding the specifics of key discussion topics touched upon during the talks.

Speculations are that Seoul maintained “silence” over the THAAD issue because President Moon Jae-in wants help from China to advance his “peace initiatives” on the Korean Peninsula. 

Also, with next year’s general elections looming, Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) want to patch things up by ending China’s retaliation against South Korean industries following the country’s decision to deploy the radar system. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

There is a new book out and of course to create traction in the media with it the author has to claim that President Trump is an idiot:

During that conversation, Wead wrote, Trump reiterated his belief that Obama would have gone to war with the North had he stayed in office.

“And I also think that thirty to one hundred million people could have been killed,” Wead quoted the president as saying.

South Korea has 51.2 million people and North Korea has a population of 25 million.

Trump then expressed disbelief at experts’ predictions that 100,000-200,000 people would die, a number he said was the equivalent of the population of a South Korean village.

“Well, as you know, Seoul, the capital city, is right by the so-called border,” he continued, according to Wead. “And that is a tough border by the way. An impenetrable border. And Seoul has a population of thirty million people. Kim has ten thousand guns, artillery, they call them cannons. He doesn’t even need a nuclear weapon to create one of the greatest calamities in history.”

The population of Seoul is just under 10 million.

Yonhap

When I read Trump’s comments I clearly understood that when he was talking about Seoul he was referencing the Seoul metropolitan area. The Seoul city center has 10 million, but the metro area has 25 million. Also when he is talking about upwards of 100 million casualties how do we know he wasn’t including if a nuclear weapon was dropped on Tokyo or other major cities? It is context like this that is important, but to get media attention he must be described as an idiot, so mission accomplished by this author.

The only real idiots are whoever told him a war on the Korean peninsula would only lead to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. If they did not use nukes I could maybe understand that number, but I find it hard to believe that if North Korea went all in and used nuclear weapons, that only that many people would die.

A quote I did find interesting that may explain why President Trump is pushing so hard on the Moon administration on USFK cost sharing is the status of the THAAD battery in South Korea:

“Do you know how much we spend defending South Korea? Four and half billion dollars a year. Figure that one out?” he added.

Trump has reportedly demanded that South Korea raise its contribution to shared defense costs to US$5 billion next year, a five-fold increase from this year.

Trump also complained to Wead that the people who treated the U.S. the worst were its allies.

“And you’ve heard the story with South Korea with the missiles system, with the THAAD anti-missile system?” he was quoted as saying.

I read that to mean that he is not happy about how the Moon administration is allowing the blockade of the road to the THAAD battery to occur. ROK Heads may remember that the road is still blocked and all supplies and personnel to the battery have to be flown in by helicopter. The battery though there to protect South Koreans is frequently used by Moon’s leftist allies to promote wild conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism.

Trump we have seen has a long memory when it comes to things he does not like and maybe the THAAD issue is something he is still unhappy about and influencing the cost sharing talks?

The Blue House claims the First Lady was just wearing a simple butterfly pin, but as Dr. Tara O points out, this butterfly had far more meaning to anti-US groups in South Korea:

President Trump arrived in South Korea on June 29, 2019 after the G-20 meeting in Japan.  The next day, he visited the DMZ and met with Kim Jong-un. On the 29th, the South Korean First Lady is spotted wearing a light blue butterfly brooch near President Trump.  The light blue butterfly is a symbol adopted by anti-THAAD, anti-U.S. groups in South Korea.

First Lady Kim Jung-sook (김정숙) also wore the light blue butterfly pin the day before on June 28, 2019 in Japan at the G-20 meeting during the group photo session and the dinner banquet.

East Asia Research

You can read more at the link, but the First Lady was not the only one to wear the pin, other ROK officials did so as well during Trump’s visit. The blue butterfly has been become the symbol for all the anti-THAAD protesters in recent months.

Probably the most offensive thing about the anti-THAAD protesters is that it is based on lies that the electromagnetic waves from the radar are going to cause cancer and kill crops.

If the residents want to go measure electromagnetic waves they can do it right now.  They can purchase their own detection device and stand at their homes or farms and see what electromagnetic waves they detect.  They are not going to detect anything though because a group of Korean reporters were invited to the THAAD site on Guam and have already measured electromagnetic waves and found nothing.

This is simply not in my backyard protests that have been coopted by the usual anti-US groups that have little to do with the merits of the THAAD system and the ROK First Lady is apparently supporting this nonsense.

Chinese Emperor President Xi during a G-20 summit meeting with President Moon is once again calling for the removal of the THAAD missile defense system from South Korea:

They talked about various pending issues for around 40 minutes through simultaneous translation.

Some thorny issues were raised as well, such as the China-U.S. dispute over cybersecurity related to 5G technology and the advanced U.S. missile defense system deployed in South Korea, called THAAD, according to a Cheong Wa Dae official.

Xi asked Moon to resolve the THAAD problem, as Beijing has been strongly opposed to its presence on the peninsula. Moon replied that it’s a matter linked with denuclearization.

At the outset of the talks, which pool media were allowed to cover, Xi said Beijing would contribute to maintaining regional peace and stability.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but China does not sound like much of a friend and promoting peace when it tells South Korea to disarm itself and make its citizens vulnerable to missile attacks from the thug regime the Chinese support.

Judging by the picture it appears that the THAAD soldiers are simply doing training on how to reload their launchers which is hardly provocative. However, when North Korea is looking for an excuse to raise tensions they will always find one:

North Korea has condemned a recent anti-ballistic missile defense drill by the United States Forces Korea (USFK), calling it a rash act of military provocation, the North’s propaganda media outlets said Friday.

The criticism came about a week after the USFK revealed it staged an exercise last month using the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system deployed in South Korea, at its Camp Humphreys garrison in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province.

“The drill is a military provocation that breaks the atmosphere of peace on the Korean Peninsula,” Uriminzokkiri, the North’s propaganda website, said.

“It would be a stupid misjudgment for the U.S. to believe that the country can achieve its impure intention by testing and threatening the North with power.” 

Pyongyang also stepped up pressure on Seoul, urging it to “behave discreetly” over the U.S.’s military exercises on the peninsula.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this is all standard North Korea playbook that we are seeing here.

This is an issue I hope at some point the Trump administration confronts the Moon administration on because this blockade of the THAAD site is ridiculous and could be ended at any time by the Korean government:

“The buildings we have weren’t built to house soldiers,” she said. “It’s not unlivable, but it’s not nice.”

She says the protesters not only force her troops to fly in and out every week via helicopter, but also stop U.S. vehicles from shipping in goods and supplies.

“Currently, the only way on and off of the site is by helicopter,” she said. “A week at a time at least, every single one of my soldiers is away from their barracks room, their family.”

She said if the gates weren’t blocked they wouldn’t require the extended rotations and could keep more people at Carroll, which is only a 25-minute drive away.

Spc. Josiah Welch, a THAAD operator, said conditions have improved since he started at the site in November.

“There was pretty bad mold initially,” said the 25-year old from Winter Park, Fla. “There was a week where we didn’t have running water – we had baby wipe showers.”

Now they have air conditioning and showers, he said.

The military finally began shipping fresh food three times week last month, reducing some reliance on pre-prepared field rations, Theilacker said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.