hankyoreh

Moon Chung-in

President Moon Jae-in’s special aide on unification, diplomacy and security Moon Chung-in took aim on June 16 at the attempts by US media to pressure the new administration in Seoul, claiming that the THAAD issue is a “red line” for the South Korea-US alliance.

Moon’s remarks came while addressing the issue of an environmental impact assessment on the THAAD deployment site during a seminar on “New Administrations and the U.S.-R.O.K. Alliance: Challenges and Way,” which was hosted in Washington by the East Asia Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“US Forces Korea cannot be exist above South Korean law,” Moon stressed. “Administrations may have been able to skirt over the law during the dictatorships of the past, but not today,” he added, emphasizing the importance of procedural legitimacy in the THAAD deployment.

While Moon conceded that “legal procedures could be carried out more swiftly,” he also stressed that an environmental impact assessment “needs to measure impacts across all four seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter.”

“Perhaps even God himself cannot elide over that regulation,” he added.

The remarks are being seen as implying the THAAD deployment could be postponed for around one year. At the same time, Moon stressed that the decision would follow South Korean legal procedure and the agreement on the THAAD deployment would not be overturned.

In a talk with South Korean correspondents afterwards, Moon strongly disputed US experts‘ claims that failure to resolve the THAAD issue could “break the alliance.”

“If that’s true, what kind of an alliance is it?” he asked, adding, “It‘s hard to accept people talking as though THAAD were all there is to the alliance.”

“If the alliance breaks down over a defensive weapons system like THAAD, you have to question whether the US military would come running in the event of an emergency [on the Korean Peninsula],” he continued.

Moon immediately went to stress he was speaking as a professor rather than as a special presidential aide.

“THAAD is a security issue. At the same time, it’s an issue of the rule of law and democracy, including things like environmental impact and the rights to life and property,” he said.

“Tremendous [economic] damages have resulted from China’s THAAD sanctions, much larger than we think,” he added.

“Look at President Trump. [He’s said] he could change out the alliance because the public’s welfare is important,” Moon continued. “What’s wrong with our President taking that seriously and giving it careful consideration?”

Stressing that he was relating his own opinion, Moon described the South Korea-US alliances as “a means of survival and a tool,” adding that it was “difficult to accept that democracy can be compromised and the public’s welfare can be compromised [over the alliance].”

Justice Party lawmaker Kim Jong-dae, who participated in the foreign correspondents’ talk, noted that South Korea and the US had “agreed at the time that the THAAD deployment would take place by the end of the year,” adding that the question was “why they had to accelerate things and cause a speeding mishap.”

“I cannot contain my astonishment at the way some of the news outlets in Washington have made it out as though [the Moon administration] is deliberately delaying [the THAAD deployment] to weaken the South Korea-US alliance or taking its cues from Beijing,” Kim said.

“It‘s not true, and the way THAAD was trotted out in the middle of an election needs to be investigated,” he continued.

In terms of a resolution to the THAAD issue, domestic experts said the Moon administration had adopted a solid defensive strategy by using [the deployment’s] procedural legitimacy to buy time. But some also expressed worries about how the situation was playing out.

“Supposing we do buy time, the big concern is whether they have any bright ideas for taking advantage to solve the problem,” said Cho Se-young, director of the Dongseo University Japan Center.

An expert in US-China relations speaking on condition of anonymity said there were “no signs of an imminent resolution of the THAAD issue.”

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent and Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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