Moon halts THAAD deployment
By Jun Ji-hye
The presidential office said Wednesday that the ongoing deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) unit here will be suspended until a full-scale environmental impact study of the site is completed.
It added, however, two launchers, radar and other equipment that have already been deployed at the site in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, will remain in place while the study is conducted.
“There is no reason to demand the withdrawal of the THAAD unit equipment already deployed at the site,” a Cheong Wa Dae official said, asking not to be named. “But a decision on whether to continue to deploy the additional launchers will be made after the environmental survey is finished.”
The official added that Cheong Wa Dae believes that the deployment is not so urgent as to skip the environmental assessment.
A full-scale survey will most likely take more than a year. This puts the brakes on the Ministry of National Defense and the United States Forces Korea’s (USFK) plan to fully deploy the unit by the end of this year.
A THAAD battery consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors (eight per launcher), a fire control and communications unit and an AN/TPY-2 radar.
The comments from the presidential office followed its investigation into an incident where the ministry “intentionally” omitted the arrival of the four additional launchers in a policy briefing to the new administration.
Cheong Wa Dae raised suspicions that this “covert” process might have been aimed at evading an assessment of their environmental impact.
When announcing the results of the investigation, Monday, Moon’s chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan said the presidential office also found out that that ministry had attempted to avoid the extensive survey by dividing the 700,000 square meters of land it provided to the USFK for the deployment.
The law stipulates that installing military facilities in land greater than 330,000 square meters requires a full-scale environmental survey. Yoon said the ministry decided to provide 320,000 square meters of land first, and the rest afterwards to avoid this regulation.