US troops began delivering a missile defense system to South Korea on Wednesday — amid strong protests from China and heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
America’s Pacific commander Adm. Harry Harris Jr. told Congress that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, would be operational “in coming days,” Reuters reported.
The system took shape while the USS Carl Vinson carrier group steamed toward the Korean peninsula for joint exercises with South Korea and a bellicose Pyongyang signaled possible nuclear and missile testing.
Harris said he was confident the US could thwart any North Korean missile attack on its naval forces, including the USS Michigan nuclear submarine, which docked in South Korea on Tuesday with its 154 cruise missiles.
“The weapons that North Korea would put against the Carl Vinson strike group are easily defended by the capabilities resident in that strike group,” Harris said.
“If it flies it will die, if it’s flying against the Carl Vinson strike group.”
He told the House Armed Services Committee that deploying the warships and bomber aircraft help to “ameliorate (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un’s worst impulses.”
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said THAAD components were moved to the deployment site on what had been a golf course in the southern county of Seongiu, about 155 miles south of the capital, Seoul, Reuters reported.
“South Korea and the United States have been working to secure an early operational capability of the THAAD system in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threat,” the ministry said in a statement.
But the system has raised North Korean ally China’s hackles.
“China strongly urges the United States and South Korea to stop actions that worsen regional tensions and harm China’s strategic security interests and cancel the deployment of the THAAD system and withdraw the equipment,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.
“China will resolutely take necessary steps to defend its interests,” he said, without elaborating.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for “restraint” regarding North Korea in a call with President Trump, who has said that military action was an “option on the table.”
Washington has urged Beijing to do more to rein in North Korea’s military bluster.
Harris said he expected the hermit kingdom to soon be able to develop a missile capable of reaching the US.
“Just as Thomas Edison is believed to have failed 1,000 times before successfully inventing the electric light bulb, so too, Kim Jong Un will keep trying,” Harris said about the despot, who has been embarrassed by some colossal failures in his country’s ballistic-missile program.
“One of these days soon, he will succeed,” he told the House Armed Services Committee.
A pre-emptive strike against North Korea could spark a wider war on the Korean peninsula, lawmakers and experts have warned.
Harris said the US has “a lot of pre-emptive options” that would affect North Korea’s “military calculus,” but he declined to provide specifics.
Meanwhile, all 100 senators were invited Wednesday to an unprecedented briefing about North Korea featuring Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford.
The briefing team then planned to address House members on Capitol Hill.
The briefings were to focus on intelligence about the North’s capabilities, US response options, and how to get China and other countries to enforce existing economic sanctions on Pyongyang — along with ideas for new penalties.
The developments in the tinderbox region came a day after North Korea conducted live-fire artillery drills on the 85th anniversary of the founding of its million-strong Korean People’s Army.
On Wednesday, about 500 South Korean villagers concerned with THAAD’s potential environmental impact protested by hurling water bottles at trailers carrying missile-related parts.
Thirteen villagers and cops were injured in scuffles, village leader Kim Jong-kyung said.
“There’s still time for THAAD to be actually up and running, so we will fight until equipment is withdrawn from the site and ask South Korea’s new government to reconsider,” he told Reuters by telephone.
Also protesting the system was South Korean politician Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party, the front-runner in the May 9 election, who said the new administration should first gauge public opinion and hold more talks with Washington before deploying it.
With Post Wires