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DPRK lashes out against THAAD deployment in S. Korea

Xinhua, July 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Thursday slammed South Korea for its decision to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) despite strong opposition at home and abroad, saying that Seoul was "kowtowing to the U.S. brigandish demand."

By doing so, the South Korean government "sold off the destiny and interests of the nation and harassed regional peace and stability," a spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement carried by the state-run news agency KCNA.

The THAAD deployment has revealed the intention of South Korean President Park Geun-hye to seek escalated confrontation between the two Koreas and even northward invasion, said the statement.

The statement also warned that the Park administration will "have to pay most severely and bitterly" for this decision as it has "submitted to the U.S." and "offered the Korean Peninsula to foreign forces."

South Korea's Defense Ministry on Wednesday announced an agreement with the United States to deploy the U.S. THAAD missile defense system to its southeastern Seongsan-ri region despite continued opposition from neighboring countries.

Last Friday, Seoul and Washington officially announced the decision to deploy U.S. interceptors to South Korean soil as part of defense measures to defend the military forces of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and protect the safety of South Korea and its people from the DPRK's nuclear threats and ballistic missiles.

However, the decision enraged people living in the region, with some writing in blood to express strong opposition to the deployment of the THAAD, whose X-band radar is known to emit a super-strong microwave detrimental to the human body.

The DPRK on Monday vowed to take physical countermeasures against the THAAD deployment in South Korea, threatening "merciless retaliatory strikes to reduce South Korea to a sea of flames."

The THAAD, developed by the U.S.-based defense company Lockheed Martin, is designed to shoot down missiles at an altitude of 40-150 km using a hit-to-kill approach. It is composed of six mobile launchers, 48 interceptors and a radar and fire control system valued at about 1.5 trillion won (1.3 billion U.S. dollars). Endi