The nation’s intelligence agency also added it is still conducting a probe into the male North Korean manager.
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Oh Young Ran, a North Korean official identified as the director of the American and Africa Research Institute, had said that as the United States expanded territorially, the country “made it a policy of slaughtering” Native Americans and that it was through these “military achievements” U.S. Presidents were able to hold power as “human rights criminals”.
Beijing is also opposed to the move, seeing it as a United States bid to flex its military muscle in the region and undermine China’s own missile capabilities.
The decision to have the advanced missile defense system here was announced last month, after five months of discussion by the allies.
While China has grown increasingly irritated over North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, it strongly opposes South Korea’s decision to host the THAAD unit.
Gen. Mark Milley, the U.S. Army chief of staff, told Gen. Li Zuocheng, who heads the ground forces of the People’s Liberation Army, that the coming deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to South Korea is only meant to defend South Korea and the U.S. against North Korean ballistic missiles. About one thousand men in South Korea’s Seoungju, where a THAAD battery will be deployed, have staged a mass protest action.
North Korea is believed to possess around 1,000 ballistic missiles, and 70% of those missiles are said to be aimed at South Korea.
China and South Korea might undergo a brief period of “cold war” over the THAAD deployment, but it is unlikely that it will fundamentally affect the strategic framework in East Asia, especially because both of them are facing imminent nuclear threats from North Korea. China’s Defense Ministry has already said it will consider measures to counter it.
Beijing leaders see it as an offensive spying system that can look deep into its territory, thereby seriously threatening China’s national security. Its radar is capable of identifying objects as small as 10-15 centimeters.
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The chief of the Military-Political Studies Center at the Moscow institute of global relations MGIMO, Aleksey Podberyozkin, recalls that North Korea has no inter-continental missiles and Pyongyang is unable to threaten the United States. This risk factor has now been neutralized, but the U.S. missile defense facilities in Europe are still there.
