US soldiers plow up a golf course fairway to deploy a missile shield.[Yonhap News Photo]
US troops will put an advanced missile shield into "actual" operation soon, South Korea's defense ministry said Thursday, adding it's almost ready to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles.
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was in "field" deployment without prior engineering work in Seongju, some 200 kilometers (124 miles) southeast of Seoul, the ministry said, a day after the system was brought into a golf course in an unheralded pre-dawn operation helped by South Korean riot police.
US Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of the US Pacific Command, told a House committee in Washington that the THAAD system would be "operational in the coming days".
In Seoul, defense ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said the system was installed not for a test run but actual field operation. "It's deployed not for a test but for actual operation. We are now capable of coping with North Korean provocations," he said.
US and South Korean experts will jointly examine the environmental effect of the missile shield later, he said in response to allegations that Seoul broke its earlier pledge to conduct an environmental assessment before putting a THAAD battery into operation.
Such a "field" use is possible because the environmental assessment will take weeks or months, the spokesman said.
Local residents opposed the THAAD battery for emitting strong electromagnetic waves. The missile shield normally consists of launchers, interceptors, a fire control and communications unit, and a powerful X-band radar.
Beijing insisted the THAAD system would "seriously" hurt strategic interests of China and other countries as well as the security balance in Northeast Asia, but US President Donald Trump has revealed his strategy to bolster trilateral security ties in Northeast Asia.
"I find it preposterous that China would try to influence South Korea to not get a weapon's system that's completely defensive against the very country that's allied with China," Harris said. "So if China wants to do something constructive then they ought to focus less, in my opinion, on South Korea's defensive preparations and focus instead more on North Korea's offensive preparations."
Harris said that with every nuclear and missile test, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "moves closer to his stated goal of preemptive nuclear strike capability against American cities".
Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
