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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) emeritus professor Theodore Postol

MIT emeritus professor and US missile defense system expert Theodore Postol is raising questions over whether China might regarded Seongju as a military target following Seoul and Washington’s decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the North Gyeongsang Province county.

“It’s a near certainty that the Chinese military will develop a strike plan for the THAAD radar deployed in Seongju,” said Postol.

“It’s not an emotional thing. China doesn’t have any choice because it sees the THAAD radar as a major threat to its own nuclear deterrent against the US,” he explained.

While we were talking, I asked him what kind of damage we could expect from an attack on Seongju. First, he explained that China has announced a principle of not using nuclear weapons preemptively. The reason it adheres to this policy, he said, is not because of ethical issues, but because “a preemptive strike could bring massive retaliation from the US.” If the US were to preemptively attack China, however, it would have no choice but to carry out a retaliatory strike, in which Seongju was likely to be a target, he added.

With most of China’s short- and medium-range nuclear missiles having 200 to 300 kilotons of explosive power, Postol predicted a Chinese attack on Seongju would likely be carried out with a roughly 200-kiloton nuclear weapon on a short-range surface-to-surface missile. As a unit of explosive power, one kiloton is equivalent to one thousand tons of TNT exploding simultaneously. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima in 1945 was a 12.5-kt weapon.

A 200-kt weapon would result in a mushroom cloud with a radius of roughly one-third of a kilometer forming in less than a second, Postol explained. (He also provided his own graphic.) The cloud’s temperature would be around 7,726 degrees Celsius at its hottest point - four times hotter than the 1,726-degree surface temperature of the sun. The massive emissions of light and heat from the cloud would reduce the area within a 5-km radius to a “sea of fire.” Metal structures would melt and granite would be pulverized in areas near the cloud.

Postol also predicted an area of 20 kilometers would be set aflame within seconds of the blast. Equivalent to around 20 million square meters, it’s an area ten times the size of Seoul’s Yeouido neighborhood. Scariest of all: depending on weather conditions, a cloud dust 5 to 15 km wide carrying lethal levels of radiation could be carried up to 100 to 150 km away.

I wrote back to Postol to tell him how shocking I found his analysis to be. He wasn’t surprised.

“I’ve been talking for decades about the [terrifying] effects of nuclear weapons, and nobody’s ever not been shocked,” he said.

“The chances of a situation like this happening are very low, but if it does happen it will be a disaster for East Asia,” he added.

“It shows why reducing tensions among the US, China, and Russia is such a practical concern.”

Postol went on to note that rising tensions “increase the chances of something accidentally happening that could bring the end of civilization.”

“The only aim a thoughtful person can have to prevent the danger of a catastrophic tragedy is to pursue policies that can check the rise in political tensions,” he continued.

In her commemorative address for Liberation Day on Aug. 15, President Park Geun-hye criticized the opposition to THAAD by saying, “A matter cannot become the subject of political strife when the public’s lives are at stake.” But the paradox is that the more a country beefs up its military strength, the more endangered its security becomes. Those were the conditions in 1914 on the eve of the First World War. The arms race in Europe back then didn’t guarantee security - it stirred up mutual distrust, fear, and overreactions that led to a catastrophe for humankind.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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