“To accomplish this, the South needs more ballistic missiles at its disposal”, Yonhap quoted an official as saying on condition of anonymity.
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Earlier, China and Russian Federation came out against Seoul’s intention to host the U.S. missile defense.
Park said that her priority as president was to “protect the lives of our people from the reckless provocations of the North”.
“THAAD is also a self-defensive measure we’ve made a decision to deploy to protect the lives of our people from North Korea’s reckless provocations”, Geun-hye said.
Lee confirmed that the anti-THAAD protests will continue. They had their heads shaved to express their strong disagreement with the authorities’ plans.
The South Korean president said North Korea will continue to face economic hardship and global isolation until it agrees to give up its nuclear program.
Experts here said the THAAD battery, composed of six mobile launchers, 48 interceptors, a radar and a fire control unit, is incapable of shooting down more than 1,000 DPRK missiles targeting South Korea.
He insisted the powerful missile defense system is not meant to track missles inside China but to defend attacks from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Moscow sees eye to eye with Beijing”, Arbatov said.
US Vice Admiral James D. Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the THAAD system – which has an operational range of up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) would never be used against China. China is reviewing measures that would restrict imports of Korean goods and services and also suspend Chinese firms’ investment deals in Korea, according to Bloomberg News on Friday.
Both China and Russian Federation are opposed to the THAAD system and accuse the USA and South Korea of threatening their security.
“The Russian-US INF treaty does not apply to China, whose intermediate range missiles constitute a major threat to US aircraft carrier groups – the main tool of projecting US military power to the Asia-Pacific Region”, Zolotaryov said. “The United States would like to find out the parameters of these missiles”.
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The tests, which appear to have violated UN Security Council resolutions, come after the publication of Japan’s Defense White Paper, which states that North Korea’s nuclear program is a direct threat to Japan. The idea is to neutralize Pyongyang’s missile threat in three ways – the Hyunmoo missiles, which target the North’s missile bases, the Korean Air and Missile Defense system, which is created to shoot down missiles in flight, and the so-called “Kill Chain”, which would preemptively destroy missiles before they are launched.
