SEOUL: Several thousand South Koreans staged an angry protest Thursday against the planned deployment of a US anti-missile system near their hometown, but President Park Geun-Hye insisted the move was a national security imperative.
South Korea’s defence ministry announced last week the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system, or THAAD, will be installed in Seongju — a rural county about 200 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of Seoul — by the end of next year.
The decision was predicated on the growing threat posed by North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme.
But Seongju residents say the THAAD deployment makes their county a strategic target and complain that it carries health and environmental hazards.
“Let’s block the deployment of THAAD, a threat to peace on the Korean peninsula!” chanted some 2,000 protestors, waving flags and banners that read ‘No THAAD’ as they sat outside Seoul station on Thursday.
The protestors were surrounded by hundreds of police, amid concerns of a repetition of a violent standoff last Friday, which saw Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn pelted with eggs and water bottles.
