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asia policy 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Seoul’s decision on THAAD angered China, and many quickly called for sanctioning South Korea. Beijing believes that THAAD exceeds the ROK’s defense needs and that the X-band radar system likely to accompany its deployment would undermine China’s security by offsetting its nuclear deterrence capability. However, South Korea had its own logic, convinced that this decision was necessitated by the DPRK’s moves. After the fourth nuclear test and the long-range rocket test that soon followed, the Park administration agreed to initiate consultations with the United States on the earliest possible deployment of a THAAD system. North Korea’s accelerated missile testing program, evident since April 2006, reinforced the urgency and need for a meaningful response from Seoul. According to the official announcement, operational deployment of THAAD will occur by the end of 2017 and is intended to defend the infrastructure and citizens of South Korea and to protect core military capabilities underpinning the U.S.-ROK alliance. This was an obvious setback for Chinese diplomacy. During the Xi-Park meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hangzhou in September 2016, the THAAD issue was once again raised. According to what Xi said to Park, failing to resolve the issue would be unfavorable to strategic stability in the region and would exacerbate China’s existing suspicions. 2 China, South Korea, and the United States must reach an understanding on the technical aspects of the system and identify ways to reassure China that THAAD will not undermine its national security. Amid heightened tension in the South China Sea, the THAAD decision suggested to North Korea that the Sino-U.S. rivalry was worsening. Pyongyang probably believed that it could take advantage of this situation. This assumption was not totally wrong. U.S. naval operations, especially sending warships into the South China Sea, highlighted the friction between the United States and China and were inevitably seen as challenging China. With Beijing already engaged in a delicate balancing act to pressure Pyongyang to change its behavior while ensuring regime stability, the decision on THAAD inevitably weakened China’s determination to strictly sanction North Korea. In this sense, South Korea took this step at the expense of the ROK-China relationship and of Beijing’s close cooperation on sanctioning Pyongyang. According to a study carried out by the Sejong Institute, a South Korean think tank, the volume of trade between China 2 See People’s Daily, September 6, 2016. [ 86 ]
oundtable • the north korean nuclear threat and the DPRK has been rising since the United States and South Korea announced their plans to deploy THAAD. 3 The Fifth Nuclear Test Against this backdrop of deteriorating Sino-ROK relations, Pyongyang once again “helped” with Beijing-Seoul ties. On September 9, the DPRK’s National Day, a fifth nuclear test was carried out—the second one in 2016. The test was close enough to the Sino-DPRK border to send palpable tremors into northeastern China and prompt schools there to be evacuated. People in China’s northeastern region could apparently sense the quake and, given the disastrous impact of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan, were afraid of the possible catastrophic consequences of nuclear radiation from the test. During Kim Jong-il’s seventeen years in power, only two nuclear tests were carried out, whereas Kim Jong-un has already conducted three in less than five years. This fact demonstrates Pyongyang’s obstinate adherence to its present course. Since the fifth test, analysts in China have become somewhat more sober about the reality of the DPRK’s nuclear program and have suggested that China needs to work together with the ROK and the United States to cope with it. For many years, China tried to persuade its prickly nominal ally to take a new path of reform and open up to the outside world. It repeatedly warned Pyongyang that developing nuclear weapons would not necessarily increase its security but, on the contrary, could lead to problematic consequences and undermine its own interests both domestically and internationally. More than two decades have passed since the outbreak of the Korean nuclear crisis, and China has been unsuccessful in persuading Pyongyang not to develop nuclear weapons. As a result, China’s security interests have been undermined. Pyongyang’s actions have offered Washington ample opportunity to beef up the U.S.-ROK alliance, an important part of the “Asia rebalance” that Beijing feels wary about. When the “incantation of the golden hoop” on North Korea tightened as more sanctions were imposed, some Chinese companies attracted 3 China’s border trade with North Korea is reportedly “very active.” See Elizabeth Shim, “China Border Trade with North Korea ‘Very Active,’ Report Says,” United Press International, August 22, 2016 u http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/08/22/China-border-trade-with- North-Korea-very-active-report-says/2911471871707. See also Jong-seok Lee, “The Current State of China–North Korea Economic Exchange and the North Korean Economy Observed from the Border Areas,” Sejong Institute, Policy Briefing, August 25, 2016. [ 87 ]
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