The THAAD Missile System - China vs. Korea

[Randy W]

in the Global Times - Lotte is a "multinational conglomerate with headquarters in South Korea and Japan" (Wikipedia). I'm not seeing a list of where their businesses are (apparently it's more than just department stores - "Lotte group's major businesses are food products, shopping, finance, construction, amusement parks, hotels, trade, oil and sports.")

 

Lotte's development in China should come to an end

The board of South Korea's Lotte Group on Monday approved a land-swap agreement between its golf course in the Seongju County, where the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system is set to be deployed, and a state-owned military site in Gyeonggi Province near Seoul. An official agreement between Lotte and the nation's military is due to be signed on Tuesday, and the South Korean military hopes to set up the missile shield by June at the earliest.

Because of the THAAD deployment, a contention of will between Beijing and Seoul has emerged and retreat doesn't seem to be an option right now for either side. Given this, China might as well take any necessary actions and let South Korea bear the punishments which it once fancied it might be able to duck.

 

 

 

More coverage in the Shanghaiist -

 

South Korea's Lotte Group under attack in China after handing over land to build missile site

 

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/lotte_anger2.jpg

 

Lotte admitted that it was concerned about the havoc that rising tensions could wreck on its business. Already, the company suffers from undeclared economic sanctions from China. Last year, it was forced to shutter three retail stores near Beijing and suspend construction on a $2.6 billion theme park project it was building in Shenyang after facing a series of regulatory probes.

 

[Randy W]

. . . and Bloomberg

 

China Roils South Korean Stocks With News of Travel Curbs

China has the economic power to move markets, and it isn’t afraid to use it.

South Korean stock trading offered a case in point Friday, with a selloff in hotels, cosmetic makers and other tourism-related companies that made the country’s benchmark the worst performer among Asian equity markets. The slide followed a Yonhap news agency report on China ordering travel agents to halt sales of holiday packages to South Korea.

The news comes amid tensions between the two nations over South Korean intentions to deploy an American missile defense system that China says would upset the military balance on the Korean peninsula. The broader takeaway: while South Korea has given no indication it would change its plans, there can be risks of economic damage -- at least for a time -- that offer investors both dangers and opportunities.

“There is actually no industry in Korea that is free from THAAD risks,” said Jung Sang Jin, who helps manage the equivalent of $33 billion at Korea Investment Management Co. in Seoul, using the abbreviation for the U.S. missile-defense system. “Many companies have plants in China, and China could halt operation at those plants.”

 

 

[Randy W]

continuing . . .

 

China has now shut down 55 Lotte supermarkets across the country as THAAD backlash intensifies

 

South Korea's Lotte Group has been forced to temporarily shut down 55 of its 99 stores in China as it continues to feel the pain brought on by the company's decison to ignore warnings from Beijing and hand over land to the Seoul government for the construction of the THAAD missile defense system.

On Monday, it was reported that 23 Lotte supermarkets had been shut down across the country, ostensibly due to fire code violations. That number has been steadily rising throughout the week, and currently stands at 55 stores, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. That's more than half of the company's 99 current locations in China. Of course, there's no guarantee it will stop there.

 

 

[amberjack1234]

I think that they have got it a little backwards.

[tsap seui]

As George Castanza would say, "AHA, the old fire code violation"

 

Just more proof, ya mess with China they will throw a Chinese fire drill on your butt quicker than an old blue tick can shake all of the spittle and drool off of it's jowls onto the clothes of you and yore friends.

[Randy W]

In the NY Times, an article about China's concern about the THAAD Antimissile system, and China's nuclear arsenal

 

Why U.S. Antimissile System in South Korea Worries China

 

China does not reveal the size of its nuclear forces. It has about 260 nuclear warheads that could be put on missiles, and by the Pentagon’s latest estimate, China has between 75 and 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Some estimates are lower, and one recent assessment said 40 to 50 of China’s ballistic missiles could reach the continental United States.

The United States has deployed about 1,370 nuclear warheads and has stockpiled more than 6,500, and has submarines and aircraft able to launch nuclear weapons.

China has also built several submarines that can launch nuclear missiles. But even its latest-model submarine “is noisy and quite vulnerable to anti-submarine warfare,” and therefore is not a very potent addition to its nuclear deterrent, M. Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Fiona S. Cunningham, a graduate student there, who recently published an assessment of China’s nuclear modernization, said by email.

China has also been upgrading some of its missiles so that several nuclear warheads can be placed on a single missile that then unleashes them on different targets.

China has had the ability to put multiple warheads on missiles since the 1990s, but seems to have done so only recently, when some missiles were installed with three or four warheads, said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on China’s nuclear forces at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. This showed how China has been cautious in playing catch-up to the United States, he said.

 

. . .

 

“China’s leaders thought that the important thing was to master the technology,” Mr. Lewis said. “While the United States did fine calculations of the deterrence balance, Chinese leaders tended to think of deterrence like a checklist of achievements.”

Ever since, Chinese nuclear doctrine has stuck to the idea of a “minimum means of reprisal,” with a force designed to survive and retaliate after an initial nuclear attack. Alongside that, China has a nuclear “no first use” policy: that it will not be the first to launch nuclear weapons against another nuclear foe, and that it will not use its nuclear weapons against a country without nuclear weapons.

Even so, China has been expanding and upgrading its nuclear forces, and that modernization may speed up if the government feels that it is falling too far behind the United States.

 

. . .

 

Its chief worry is not that Thaad could take down missiles: the system offers a canopy of potential protection over South Korea, but does not have the reach to bring down China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. Instead, China’s complaint is focused on Thaad’s radar system, which Chinese experts have said could be used to track the People’s Liberation Army’s missile forces.

Deploying Thaad’s current radar system “would undermine China’s nuclear deterrence by collecting important data on Chinese nuclear warheads,” Li Bin, a nuclear weapons expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote last week.

He and other Chinese experts say the radar could identify which Chinese missiles are carrying decoy warheads intended to outfox foes. That would be like being able to see what cards China holds in a nuclear poker game, and that could weaken China’s deterrent, they say.

 

 

[Randy W]

More fallout over THAAD - in the SCMP. Jeju Island is one of the few (foreign) places Chinese visitors can travel to without a visa.

 

‘Not a single customer’: South Korea’s Jeju Island struggles as Chinese tourists desert it

The ‘Hawaii of South Korea’ is feeling the heat as Beijing bans package tours to the country after a diplomatic spat over a missile system, but some see hope in domestic visitors

 

 

China has banned travel agencies from selling package tours to South Korea in protest at Seoul’s decision earlier this year to deploy a controversial, US-made missile defence system that Beijing sees as a threat to its security.

The ban is still in place for China’s eight-day “Golden Week” national holiday period that began on October 1, and Jeju Island, known as the Hawaii of South Korea, has been hardest hit because 90 per cent of its foreign visitors come from China, whether for honeymoons, to enjoy its golf courses or for family holidays.

“There used to be 300 to 400 guides for Chinese tourists on the island, but now there are no more than 50,” said Park Jung-kwan, a 39-year-old Chinese native who migrated to Jeju to work as a tour guide and hire-car driver.

Park said his business has fallen by at least 50 per cent from last year, even though he targets mostly individual travellers who are not covered by the package tour ban.

 

“Chinese are too embarrassed to come to South Korea, ” he said.

 

 

[Allon]

Sometimes I wonder if a trade war might not just be the answer. Some have said China is a paper tiger when it comes to not only military but economic power. And that power can only be projected in the Asian theater, not globally.

 

What if power was projected globally upon China? There has been a tendency to avoid upsetting the status quo, and certainly I don't feel like "saber rattling" but I really wonder what would happen if the rest of the world called China's bluff and just began choosing other products? Such heresy.

[amberjack1234]

I agree with Allon. South Korea is going to have to decide if they want security or money. Their choice and stop bitchin'. I guess they want it both but that just ain't how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

[Greg.D.]

Yay!

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test-radiation.html

 

 

South Korea and China End Dispute Over Missile Defense System

 

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea and China on Tuesday agreed to end a dispute over the deployment of an advanced American missile defense system in the South and to restore their economic and other ties.

 

The agreement, unveiled following low-key negotiations involving Chinese and South Korean officials, removed a major obstacle in relations between Seoul and Beijing, one that has complicated international efforts to tame North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

 

For years, China has vehemently protested the United States’ plan to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, system in South Korea, fearing it would undercut its own national security. After the United States and South Korea pressed ahead with the deployment in Seongju, 135 miles southeast of Seoul, the capital, in April, Chinese customers boycotted South Korean cars, movies and television dramas, as well as South Korean-run supermarkets.

[Randy W]

A little bit of sanity never hurts

[amberjack1234]

I agree with both of you, Now let's see what happens. My money is on Kim keeping right on schedule with his plans. I hope that I am wrong but he and his father has gone to mile to make it happen and to now just throw in the towel. I don't think so. But there is always hope.

[Randy W]

in the SCMP

 

CHINA WINS ITS WAR AGAINST SOUTH KOREA’S US THAAD MISSILE SHIELD – WITHOUT FIRING A SHOT

Seoul signs up to military constraints in return for Beijing lifting economic sanctions, setting a worrying precedent for China’s regional rivals

 

A detente between China and South Korea may be good news for the Korean economy and a necessary step towards resolving the North Korea issue, but at the same time it threatens to degrade regional security for years to come.

. . .

The military constraints are known as the “three nos”, meaning Seoul agrees there will be no further anti-ballistic missile systems in Korea, no joining of a region-wide US missile defence system and no military alliance involving Korea, the US and Japan. This is an enormous sacrifice but for reasons both economic and political Moon had few other options.

Economically, after being suffocated for 16 months by China’s “doghouse diplomacy”, many South Korean businesses were left gasping for air. Hyundai’s sales in China dropped 64 per cent in the second quarter of 2017 from a year before, Lotte’s supermarket sales in China fell 95 per cent over the same period and Chinese tour groups to South Korea were banned outright, which alone led to an estimated revenue loss of US$15.6 billion this year, according to Hyundai Research Institute.