Asia | Defending South Korea

Of missiles and melons

South Koreans fear their country’s new missile-defence system

|SEONGJU

NEAR the Seongju county office, Lee Soo-in mans a makeshift stand for citizens wanting to renounce their affiliation to the ruling Saenuri party. Over 800 have signed up in a week. Mr Lee, born in this rural town of 14,000, is stunned: conservatives in North Gyeongsang, a south-eastern province, are normally staunch supporters of Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s president. But “now we feel betrayed,” says Mr Lee.

At issue is the planned installation, on a hilltop a few kilometres away, of an American-funded missile-defence battery called THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence). Fearful of upsetting China, South Korea had long dithered over whether to add the sophisticated system—which could shoot down incoming North Korean ballistic missiles above the atmosphere—to its crop of Patriot batteries, which destroy missiles at lower altitudes. But after a suite of North Korean bomb and missile tests it is no longer delaying. Chinese opposition to the news, on July 8th, that a THAAD battery would be set up in South Korea within 18 months has been predictably shrill. It says that the system’s powerful radar might be used to snoop on China.

Yet it is the intensity of protests at home that has wrong-footed Ms Park’s administration. Misinformation about the battery has proliferated, in part because of the secrecy surrounding it. Residents in Seongju and nearby appear to fear irradiation from THAAD’s electromagnetic waves more than the (real) threat of nukes from North Korea—which has lately promised, with signature bombast, to turn Seongju into “a sea of fire” and “a pile of ash”.

The town is festooned with protest banners: “Opposed to THAAD with our lives” and “We must not pass the waves on to our young”. Residents turn out nightly for a two-hour vigil at the county office, holding candles (supplied by a local Buddhist temple) and sporting anti-THAAD pins (from the church). Rumour has it that no one wants to marry a Seongju bride. Farmers in the area grow melons, which they fear might somehow be contaminated.

South Korea has tried to quell panic by measuring what waves are emitted from its existing anti-missile systems, as well as from a THAAD battery at an American base in Guam. The military is trying to gain locals’ trust. On July 15th, two days after announcing that Seongju would host the battery, the prime minister and minister of defence visited to explain their decision (the mayor, Kim Hang-gon, says he first heard about it on television). Protesters pelted them with eggs and water bottles. Local officials, including Mr Kim, shaved their heads in protest and wrote petitions in their own blood.

Such zeal is common in South Korea’s young, raucous democracy. In the past decade civic groups have banded together with farmers and villagers to resist nuclear-power plants, naval bases and American military installations. These went ahead, but not without delays, ugly evictions and compensation. Katharine Moon of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says state heavy-handedness has repeatedly irked local communities, particularly when it suggests the bilateral military alliance takes precedence over their livelihoods and self-governance.

Nationally, support for THAAD hovers above 50%. And America enjoys far higher approval ratings today in South Korea—84%, according to the Pew Research Centre, another think-tank—than it did a decade ago. Though small leftist outfits that resent its 28,000 troops and champion engagement with North Korea have rallied against THAAD in the capital, Seoul, they have managed to mobilise only a few hundred people. For now Seongju’s conservative protesters scoff at joining forces.

In graphics: What North and South Korea would gain if they were reunified

That suggests that there is still a chance for Ms Park to cool tempers in a region that is so important to her party. Yet her early rebuke to protesters for being “divisive” was taken as “an indirect declaration of war” on Seongju’s people by one South Korean daily. A group of elderly local women—anti-THAAD badges tacked to their flowery pink pyjamas—recently pulled an enormous portrait of Ms Park from the wall of their community centre, which stands not far from where some of her ancestors are buried. In the election in 2012, 86% in Seongju voted for her; since July 15th her approval rating in North Gyeongsang has tumbled from 50% to 41%.

Ms Park’s presidency has been overshadowed by botched responses to a deadly ferry accident and a national health scare over an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Her party is still reeling from the loss of its majority in legislative elections in April—the first time for a ruling party in 16 years. Two minor opposition parties are drafting a resolution demanding that THAAD require parliamentary ratification. In a survey of South Koreans by Realmeter, a pollster, only a third agreed that deployment should not require MPs’ approval.

Such churn may delay deployment. South Korea and America plan to have the battery set up by late 2017—which, neatly, is when South Koreans go to the polls to elect their next (single-term) president. Choi Jong-kun of Yonsei University, in Seoul, thinks that presidential hopefuls will build election platforms on the promise of postponement. Perhaps by then some of the fervour will have cooled.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Of missiles and melons"

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