The fallout from the US and South Korea’s plan to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system was swift: hunger strikes and share price falls at home; ire and threats from the north and China.
Designed to protect South Korea from an increasingly bellicose Pyongyang, the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense platform — or THAAD — has become a lightening rod for tensions between Seoul, the US and China, which fears its own military might may be compromised.
That has spooked South Koreans, who fear retaliation from China, its biggest trading partner, in the form of sanctions — coincidentally or not, a Chinese car company has already ditched its use of South Korean batteries. They also fears that THAAD lacks the range to protect Seoul.