Mick Hartley

The US and South Korea are deploying THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence). This would seem the obvious option given North Korea's recent ballistic missile tests, and its nuclear capability – never mind its continuing bellicose threats and the high-testosterone instability of its reckless young ruler. The Chinese, though, are not happy. They don't like American weapons so close, in what they perceive as their own area of control:

Alarmed over North Korea’s increasingly provocative behavior, the United States said Tuesday that it had started to deploy an antimissile system in South Korea that China has angrily opposed as a threat to its security.

The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, came after North Korea launched four ballistic missiles on Monday, apparently in response to joint naval exercises by South Korea and the United States. Those launchings led South Korea to call for the accelerated deployment of Thaad.

A spokeswoman for the United States forces in South Korea said that one of five major components of the missile system had arrived on Monday. Officials said it could take a couple of months for the system to become fully operational. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had urged the South Koreans to move ahead with the deployment of the system during a visit to Seoul in February….

China has been incensed over the deployment of the system, fearing it could give the United States military the ability to quickly detect and track missiles launched in China, according to analysts. A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang, said Tuesday that China would “take the necessary steps to safeguard our own security interests, and the consequences will be shouldered by the United States and South Korea.”

Mr. Geng warned the two countries not to “go further and further down the wrong road.”

Yang Xiyu, a former senior Chinese official who once oversaw talks with North Korea, said China was worried that the deployment of the system would open the door to a broader American network of antimissile systems in the region, possibly in places like Japan and the Philippines, to counter a growing Chinese military….

The state media recently encouraged Chinese citizens to boycott South Korean products and companies over the Thaad issue. The Chinese authorities recently forced the closing of 23 stores owned by Lotte, a South Korean conglomerate that agreed to turn over land that it owned for use in the Thaad deployment. Hundreds of Chinese protested at Lotte stores over the weekend, some holding banners that read, “Get out of China.”

The Chinese concern may be understandable from their point of view but, as Joshua Stanton points out, it's also deeply hypocritical Without their support, North Korea would not have survived to become such a threat. It's a hole they've dug for themselves:

North Korean missiles are made in part from Chinese technology, in large part from components purchased in or smuggled through China, and that are almost always procured by North Korean agents who operate more-or-less openly on Chinese soil. North Korea’s missiles ride on Chinese trucks. North Korea’s nukes and missiles were paid for by dollars laundered through Chinese banks, by commerce (much of it illicit) that passed through Chinese ports.

Now that those missiles have matured into a grave threat to our allies in South Korea and Japan, and to the Americans (and their family members) stationed on allied soil, the U.S. has deployed defensive missiles to both countries. Now, China has the unmitigated gall to object to South Korea defending itself against a made-in-China threat from North Korea, presumably because missile defense weakens China’s own capacity to bully those allies, Taiwan, and perhaps even the United States.

Since 2006, China has voted for seven U.N. Security Council resolutions (1695, 1718, 1874, 2087, 2094, 2270 and 2321) and proceeded to violate all seven of them almost immediately. Why? Probably because China’s long-term strategic objective was to use North Korea to intimate South Korea, drive a wedge into the U.S.-South Korean alliance, push U.S. forces out of Korea, and then apply the same strategy to Japan. China probably realizes that by backing Kim Jong-un it’s riding a tiger, but it still prefers coddling a Caligula with nukes to allowing one free Korea to arise on its border. China’s grand strategy stands a strong chance of succeeding. Many South Koreans would sacrifice some of their personal freedom and national independence for fear of war or recession. Right now, the people of South Korea are looking to us. They wonder if they can still count on us.

It might also be helpful if the South Koreans, for so long (understandably) obsessed with their old enemy Japan, might direct some of that concern to the far more direct threat of China:

Both sides in Korea have long played the anti-Japan nationalism card, which continues to put distance between two natural allies over events that concluded 82 years ago. Not one comfort woman can still be saved from the predations of imperial Japan, but thousands of (North) Korean women who are sold as sex slaves in China still can be. I wonder if it might finally occur to Beijing that its bullying is backfiring if human rights activists put a statue of one of those trafficked women in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul. At the very least, it might make a few South Koreans stop to think about how China treats North Korean women, and whether that treatment is a metaphor for what China thinks of Koreans generally.