A South Korean agreement with the United States to deploy an antimissile system against its neighbor to the north has upset not just Pyongyang, North Korea.
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North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles that it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the USA military.
“The recent move by the South Korean side has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between the two countries”, Reuters cited Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as telling his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se.
China’s foreign minister has warned South Korea against deploying American THAAD missile defense complexes, saying it would harm the “foundation of mutual trust”.
North Korea formally withdrew in 2009 from six-party talks with South Korea, the United States, Russia, China and Japan that were aimed at tackling the nuclear issue.
In a statement issued later, China’s Foreign Ministry said that South Korea should “think twice” about the THAAD deployment, taking into consideration the good ties between Beijing and Seoul.
Wang called the talks on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ foreign ministers’ conference here in the Laotian capital, inviting Yun to the hotel hosting China’s delegation.
Top envoys from China and North Korea held talks on the sidelines of a regional summit in Laos as tensions run high on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme on Monday.
The planned deployment of the system makes Korea “the center of a new cold war”, said Archbishop Peter Lee Ki-heon, president of the Episcopal Commission for Reconciliation, and Bishop Lazzaro You Heung-sik, president of the Commission for Justice and Peace, according to an AsiaNews report.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system will be installed in the Korean Peninsula by the end of 2017.
South Korea has claimed that the missile interception system is designed only to counter the ever-growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. “But the information detected by the Thaad radar won’t be going to Tokyo”, a government official familiar with the subject told local news agency Yonhap.
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The ASEAN foreign ministers expressed concerns over current developments related to the North and reiterated their support for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
