Weekly meetings are now being held in Sosonni, a small Korean village. All locals participate in the meetings. They hope to be finally heard by Seoul and Washington. An American missile defense system has been placed a couple kilometers from their village. Whether the local residents approve, nobody even bothered to ask. We will unite and fight to the end! No to America! No to provocation! No to THAAD! An agreement with the US was signed in the beginning of last year. The deployment site took months to find.
Finally, an agreement was made with the Lotte Group. Interceptor missiles would be placed on a golf course. Local residents were simply confronted with the fact. I learned about the THAAD placement from TV. Now all we can do is pray and protest. We've been here since July 26th of last year, when they announced the future location of THAAD. We want peace and only peace. The "No THAAD" signs are everywhere — banners, jackets, even hats.
Traditional straw hats, which are usually used in the fields, are now also a tool for protesting. But the protest in this small village goes unnoticed in Seoul. There aren't any officials from the capital, and no major media outlets are covering it. All they do is send more police from the city. This is what the front entrance of the Lotte Country Club looks like now. Even VIP clients with gold cards are not allowed inside. There are more policemen than civilians here. Seoul keeps giving the same formal response. THAAD is allegedly needed for protection from North Korea.
The range of American interceptor missiles is 200 km. And the distance between their location and Seoul is 270 km. Meaning that THAAD won't protect the country's most important city. Also, the main threat for South Korea are North Korean short-range missiles. They operate at a lower altitude, so the new exoatmospheric interception system won't work on them. This system cannot provide for Korea's safety. The range of these missiles is 150-200 km. That's not enough. We shouldn't be working on things that defend against already launched missiles, but on things that ensure that it won't ever get to that in the first place. But it looks like the US doesn't plan to assist in inter-Korean negotiations.
Along with the interceptor missiles, a very powerful radar is arriving in the country. Its range is up to 1800 km. It won't just scan North Korea, but China and Russia along with it. Not only will it just monitor military movements, as Peking states, it will, in fact, pose a serious threat to China's retaliatory nuclear potential. Chinese leaders worry that THAAD's X-band radar will negate China's second-strike nuclear capacity, and that the system could be integrated with US and Japanese facilities to create a web covering all of Northeast Asia. They are starting a great war — a global arms race. They'll involve everyone — USA, China, Russia, Japan and us. At first, China protested and gave warnings. But with the unloading of the first THAAD elements, it went into action. They're taking economy-related countermeasures.
Out of 100 Lotte supermarkets in China, 50 have been shut down. The reasons vary, from safety guideline violations to rice discount fraud. Korean produce is being substituted for local produce in Chinese supermarkets. There's a large sales turnover between China and us. It's much larger than with the USA and Japan combined. Over a quarter of our exports go to China. That's 124 billion dollars' worth. We'll be broke if Peking will go on with this trade war. Exports and sales are down in Seoul as well. 70% of tourists in Korea are from China, at least they used to be. In the city's center, all of the duty-free signs are in Chinese. Lotte has its own floor devoted only to duty-free shopping. The sales representatives are glad to finally have a chance to talk about the situation. Do you have a lot of shoppers from China now? No, not really, maybe one or two here and there. There used to be a lot of Chinese shoppers, what changed? All because of THAAD. Chinese tourists cancel their bookings and refuse to leave the liners during cruises. Empty airports, museums, palaces. Instead of tourists, central squares are full of protestors. Another campsite has been set up just outside the American Embassy, where the security guards no longer do anything. Here are more posters, saying "No THAAD, No War, Yankee go home". But, obviously, the Americans aren't going anywhere.
On Friday, the US Secretary of State is arriving. Not to influence the country, but to speed up the installation of THAAD. The Acting President of Korea smiles, shakes Tillerson's hand twice and says what the US expects to hear. I hope we can become stronger allies and develop our defensive line together. Mr. Tillerson, you've been to the demilitarized zone yourself. No doubt, you could feel North Korea's threats for yourself. Tillerson nods. He certainly has been to the demilitarized zone, just a few meters from North Korea. He felt the eyes of their soldiers on himself, he heard the flicks of their cameras. What will Pyongyang do? Take pictures or shoot at its neighbors? The US doesn't seem to care. They're in a hurry, the deadline has shifted. Now THAAD's installation is due by the end of April. It has to be done before the Presidential election on May 9th. And before the new government realizes just how much THAAD will cost the Korean Peninsula.
On March 19th, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with General Secretary Xi Jinping. As shown on Chinese TV, the introduction took 20 minutes, with all the handshakes. Tillerson stated that Trump is prepared to visit China. The Chinese leader was benevolent and welcoming towards the upcoming meeting. Xi Jinping mentioned that their mutual interests are stronger than their differences. With that, they concluded their meeting.
