Deployment of the US anti-missile system in South Korea is facing a setback after the new government ordered a full-scale environmental impact probe. President Moon Jae-in is a vocal critic of the previous government’s decision to host the THAAD system.
“The order to conduct an environmental impact assessment is a guideline to enhance the procedural legitimacy of the deployment, so the defense ministry will review ways to conduct such a study, ” South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo said on Tuesday, as cited by Yonhap News Agency.
The probe may take up to a year and delay the ongoing deployment of the system, Yonhap says .
The probe is the latest step in the new South Korean government’s review of the controversial deal signed under the previous administration. The defense ministry allegedly used a number of legal loopholes to expedite the deployment of the US anti-missile system and shield it from public scrutiny.
One loophole, according to President Moon Jae-in’s office, is the partitioning of the land plot allocated for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system into two smaller ones. The ministry has agreed to provide a total of 690,000 square meters of land for the system, but has so far filed documents for only 320,000 square meters, the office said on Monday.
The reason is that under South Korean law, any deployment of equipment requiring more than 330,000 square meters of land must be subjected to a full-scale environmental impact assessment, while smaller projects only require a small informal test, presidential spokesman Cheong Wa Dae told reporters.
