NEAR the Seongju county office, Lee Soo-in mans a makeshift stand for citizens wanting to renounce their affiliation to the ruling Saenuri party. Over 800 have signed up in a week. Mr Lee, born in this rural town of 14,000, is stunned: conservatives in North Gyeongsang, a south-eastern province, are normally staunch supporters of Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s president. But “now we feel betrayed,” says Mr Lee.
At issue is the planned installation, on a hilltop a few kilometres away, of an American-funded missile-defence battery called THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Air Defence). Fearful of upsetting China, South Korea had long dithered over whether to add the sophisticated system—which could shoot down incoming North Korean ballistic missiles above the atmosphere—to its crop of Patriot batteries, which destroy missiles at lower altitudes. But after a suite of North Korean bomb and missile tests it is no longer delaying. Chinese opposition to the news, on July 8th, that a THAAD battery would be set up in South Korea within 18 months has been predictably shrill. It says that the system’s powerful radar might be used to snoop on...Continue reading
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